


Want You Back

by delires



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2018-11-17 02:10:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11265783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delires/pseuds/delires
Summary: It has been five years since Stan and Kyle last spoke. But that doesn't mean there isn't something there worth saving.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is or why it's happening. I also don't know anything about the city of Denver, or about ice hockey... 
> 
> Named for the song 'Want You Back' by Haim.

Kyle is totally drunk when he sees Stan through the window of the bar. That’s the only reason he stops to look, rather than turning away, like he normally would.

It’s press day, which means that everyone who isn’t frantically making last minute copy edits has already walked away from their desks and headed straight for the nearest boozer, the one on the corner of the block, with the tinted windows and the weird smell in the bathrooms. There is no overtime tonight, not unless you’re a chump. The editor’s credit card usually ends up behind the bar for as long as he sticks around, too, so it pays to get there early and take advantage of the free drinks while they last.

It’s easy to lose your shit on nights like this, especially when you’ve just nailed a deadline, filed a huge investigative report and found that you’re not on diary to cover anything major for the rest of the week. That’s why Kyle gets there quick and hits the drink hard.

His colleagues aren’t that bad, as drinking buddies go. Okay, they might not have the reckless spirit that makes drinking with Kenny a total blast, or offer the same catharsis that a few beers and a blazing row with Cartman can provide. But they can talk shop together, getting down and dirty with the kind of political and cultural issues that _Clash_ magazine is all about.

It’s not like he’d call them friends, but one or two of them would almost make the cut ─ for some time between the sheets, if nothing else.

The new intern looks particularly promising on that front. He’s actually older than Kyle; a mature student, retraining in journalism. He’s also an ex-lawyer, so has an arrogant sense of his own greatness. He thinks that he can change the world, because don’t they all? He’s clearly a dickhead. The guy has been hot and privileged his whole life, knows nothing else and treats everyone around him as if they have been placed there specifically to serve him.

On his first day in the office he had referred to Kyle as a “perk”. Like, of the job. “If I had known there were perks as cute as you I’d have changed careers years ago,” he’d said, smiling like this was an utterly acceptable thing to say in an environment where he was supposed to be learning from his superiors. 

Kyle had been so taken aback that he hadn't even reacted to put him in his place. He had just stammered through the rest of his explanation of how to use the coffee machine and only later thought that he probably should have kicked the dude in the balls for presuming too much.

So, yes. Christian is clearly a douche. But he’s also a gay guy who won’t apologise for the way he is, and is completely fearless about letting people know it. That’s really not as common as it should be in Kyle’s experience of living in these parts. 

Not only that, but he’s tall and broad and wears black jeans that show off the kind of tight, round ass that make it impossible to concentrate on reworking copy. 

That ass has been distracting Kyle for three weeks now. It’s time to nip it in the bud and get the fascination out of his system. He sees the way that Christian stares at him in editorial meetings. It won’t be hard. All it would take is for Kyle to drop his defences long enough to meet that stare and he’ll be getting pounded faster than you can say “fuck me.”

It has to happen, but that doesn't mean that Kyle has to feel good about doing it. And the only way to strike that balance is for him to get drunk enough to switch off his brain and leave himself able to only think with his dick. 

So, he accepts every beer and whiskey chaser that someone hands to him. He turns down the offer of a free burger. He waits until the fog descends and he’s able to laugh at all of Christian’s jokes, lean his chin coquettishly on one hand and give the impression like he’s hanging on the guy’s every word, when really there’s nothing much going on behind his eyes except visions of the two of them banging like animals. 

He knows his face is an open book, so relies on Christian being able to read it, which he clearly can, because it doesn’t take long for him to start glancing over Kyle’s shoulder at their colleagues like those losers are totally cramping their style.

“I need a smoke,” Christian says, patting down his pockets for cigarettes and a lighter and sliding off his bar stool. “You with me?”

He’s standing so close that he’d be kind of blocking the exit even if Kyle wanted to decline, but Kyle knows the score.

“Sure,” he says, licking the taste of whiskey from his lips and putting one hand on Christian’s arm to steady himself as he hops down from his seat, leaving it there just long enough to make the other man look at him with fresh interest. 

That look makes Kyle feel powerful. This shit really is fucking easy once you know how.

He walks past Christian and leads the way outside, pulling his coat tighter around him and gasping at how cold the air is. It is March, and although the days are becoming clearer and brighter, the nights are still bitter. They’re having a late cold snap and snow has been on the ground all week. It reminds Kyle uncomfortably of home.

There are no other smokers outside, so Kyle heads right for the corner of the building, a spot that he knows from experience will provide them with a small measure of privacy. You can see into the bar through a window that gives you a decent view of the whole room. But from the inside, the view out is largely obscured by the light of a neon Coors sign and a crappy imitation of a hanging Tiffany lamp.

Kyle stands with his back to the wall and leans his shoulders against it, to anchor himself against the shifting waves of intoxication that have risen up in earnest on contact with the outside world.

Christian takes his time approaching. He’s already lighting a cigarette, cupping his hand around the flame and bending his head as he walks. He exhales the first breath straight up into the sky and has the cigarette held between two gloved fingers by the time he reaches Kyle and steps right up into his personal space.

If there had been any doubt about the direction things were heading, that all evaporates in Christian’s next foggy exhale, which bounces off the brickwork right beside Kyle’s face.

They don’t bother to speak. Kyle just reaches out and uses a handful of Christian’s parka to pull him closer, tilting his chin so that their lips can touch. 

He feels Christian smile, pleased with how forward Kyle’s being, and then he lets the other man take over. It’s obvious that a guy like Christian is going to get off on calling all the shots, and if Kyle’s honest, that’s the way he likes it too.

Of course, it's just foreplay. It's too cold outside for it to be anything more, and especially when Christian has a lit cigarette held just inches away from Kyle's face. But there's something delicious in the enforced restraint. The knowledge that they couldn't take it further even if they wanted to only makes them both more desperate. 

It's not long before Kyle is gasping curses and, too turned on for standing out in the snow, pushes Christian away. He uses pretty much all his strength, so Christian stumbles as he's pushed backwards, one foot skidding in the ice. Kyle has to lunge and catch him by the arm to stop him going down.

Christian is breathing heavily, but he gets the message and keeps his distance once Kyle lets go of his arm. He lifts the cigarette to his lips with shaking fingers and looks Kyle up and down in a gesture of habit. Kyle's wearing slim-fitting trousers and boots with hidden snow grip. On top, his heavy coat hides the shape of his body and his scarf fills in the gaps. There's not exactly much to see. But Christian hums his approval all the same. 

"Damn. You're the hottest fucking thing I've seen," he says, something which Kyle doubts enormously.

"Okay, champ. Easy there," Kyle says and turns away to look through the window of the bar, checking the editor's whereabouts. 

He's still there, a safe distance away, standing beneath a TV screen mounted to the wall. It's tuned to ESPN and showing the highlights. Hockey, Kyle realises. Normally, that would be enough to make him look away, but this time he doesn't, because he's drunk and slow and anyway, what are the chances?

But then, of course, it happens. In the next second, the picture on screen changes to show a close-up of Stan Marsh with a press microphone shoved towards his face. Stan's dark hair is flat from being under his helmet. As Kyle watches, he pushes his fingers into his mouth and pulls out his mouth guard, which is wet with saliva, right in front of the camera. He grins winningly at whatever douchebag is holding the mic. It's disgusting and Kyle feels his own lip curl in response.

It's never easier, never less of a weird shock to see Stan's face plastered all over the TV ─ or in the paper, or social media, or on the side of a goddamn Denver bus ─ when Kyle hasn't spoken to the man himself in five years now. 

"Goddamnit," Kyle says out loud, without thinking and Christian steps up behind him, to peer over his shoulder at the TV.

"What's up? They lose?"

"No," Kyle says, "I don't know. I just can't stand that guy, man."

Christian looks at Kyle in disbelief.

"You can't stand Stanley Marsh? What's the matter with you? He's the best thing to happen to Denver in twenty years." 

"I'm not into hockey."

"Well, sure. But fucking look at him, though. Are you telling me you wouldn't tap that?" 

Christian drops the end of his cigarette, steps on it, and immediately sets about lighting another.

Kyle turns away from the window and squeezes his eyes shut. His head is beginning to hurt. He has just seen a caption flash across the screen, ‘Marsh to retire?’ which makes no fucking sense at all, because Stan’s barely twenty-six, still in his prime, and why the hell would an athlete quit when they’re at the top of their game like that?

Kyle opens his eyes, to find Christian staring at him. 

“He went to my school,” Kyle says, “We used to make out.”

“Shit. Is that true? I mean, I’d heard the rumours. Who hasn't? But...”

Kyle wouldn’t, usually. But he’s drunk enough that nothing matters. He has an urge to just say it for once. 

“Actually, he was my best friend. Give me that.”

“No shit,” Christian says. But he passes the cigarette, looking more impressed by Kyle than he has so far in three weeks’ worth of interning and ten minutes worth of foreplay.

Kyle exhales, the cold air magnifying his breath into a cloud of white. He hardly ever smokes, so he can’t help letting out a cough along with it.

“Anyway. He’s a douchebag.”

“I can’t believe…” Christian starts, but Kyle interrupts him.

“Okay,” he says, “Enough.” 

The cigarette is still mostly unsmoked, but Kyle tosses it aside and steps in close to Christian again, his boots crunching in the snow.

“I’m all the way across town,” Kyle says, “Is your place near?”

“Not too far.”

“Are we going, then?”

Christian pulls his phone out of his pocket. “If that’s what you want. I’ll get us a ride.”

They head around to the front of the bar. Christian’s phone says that there is an Uber just minutes away. 

As they go, Kyle can’t stop himself from looking over his shoulder at the TV one last time. 

Stan’s face is still there, wearing a serious expression now, his mouth moving as he answers questions about the game. There’s a queasy feeling in Kyle’s stomach, from the liquor and the cigarette, and the fact that he’s about to go home with yet another total jackass because there simply aren’t any better options around.

In the car, Kyle ignores Christian completely, passing it off as not wanting to piss off their driver by gaying out on his back seat. 

They are soon climbing out again and taking the elevator of Christian’s predictably fancy new-build apartment block. 

The whole thing looks like an office building, but the apartment itself seems virtually untouched. A sterile show-home kind of place, with accents of chrome and glossy black, obviously tended by a diligent maid.

“Nice pad,” Kyle says, when he really thinks the opposite.

Christian doesn't answer that. He just closes the door and wraps Kyle up in his arms, kissing him with lips that taste like smoke and whiskey.

They fuck hard, on Christian’s pristine white sheets. 

And if, right before Kyle comes he allows himself to see a flash of Stan’s face behind his closed eyelids, then so what? It’s not like that’s something new; it’s not like it will change anything.

*

In a hotel room in Colorado Springs, a phone is ringing. 

Stan stands by the window with a towel wrapped around his hips and stares at the phone until the noise stops. He’s done with talking. All anyone ever wants him to do is talk. 

The curtains are still wide open. It was light when Stan got into the shower and he didn’t bother to close them when he got out. He just switched on some lamps and then spent far too long staring out at the city. 

Now, he lets his towel drop to the floor because he’s sick of holding it up, and leans one forearm against the glass as he peers out at the drop below. 

There are lights moving on the roads. Each pair of headlights belongs to a car speeding a group of oblivious passengers away from downtown. Anyone could be inside. Families, couples, somebody Stan knows, or used to know. The thought makes him sad. 

But the team just had a good win. Stan ate a nice chicken sandwich and jerked off in a long hot shower. He has no reason to be sad.

Turning away from the window, he starts picking through his duffel bag, looking for a clean pair of sweats and a T-shirt. He pulls the pants straight on without underwear, then the shirt. He thinks about calling down to room service to bring him up a couple of beers. It’s not like he has anywhere to be tomorrow. Why the hell not?

As he’s lifting the phone from its cradle, the wire catches against the book on the bedside table. It’s _The Catcher in the Rye_. He picked up a copy on impulse at the airport in Seattle. It's pretty banged up now, from being carted around from place to place for months. 

Stan’s finding it kind of hard going, if he’s honest. Like, obviously, it’s a classic, but nothing is happening. He can’t manage to wrap his head around that. How can you have a book that isn’t really about anything?

But, probably that’s the point. Kyle could explain it to him, if he were here.

“Reception. Can I help?”

The voice in Stan’s ear takes him by surprise. He hadn’t even noticed that he had dialled, and now he stumbles over his order and forgets completely what room number he’s in. He has to go to the door and check.

“Okay, someone will be right up with those. You’re so welcome,” the receptionist chirps, before Stan even has a chance to thank her.

He hangs up the phone, then stays where he is, scowling down at the cover of the book. 

Kyle is the real reason he bought the fucking thing. It was because he’d been thinking of Kyle at the time, and it seemed like a book that Kyle would choose.

The beers turn up and Stan drinks both of them a bit too quickly. He picks up _The Catcher in the Rye_ and reads two pages before he ends up tossing it aside and flopping back down on the bed instead. 

His childhood friends have been on his mind a lot lately. Maybe it’s a quarter-life crisis thing, or maybe it’s been long enough that the distance between them is finally beginning to ache.

For a moment, he thinks about picking up the phone and dialling the Broflovskis’ landline, which, even after all this time is the only phone number besides his own and the one for City Wok Chinese takeout that he has memorised. If he asked Sheila for Kyle’s current cell number, she would give it to him. She’d probably be thrilled to hear from him. 

But Stan can’t see how he could make the next part work. There’s no scenario he can imagine that doesn't end with Kyle spitting and cursing and hanging up on him before he even has a chance to apologise.

So instead, he just climbs into bed and turns off the lamp. 

He lies in the dark and stares up at the ceiling until he knows nothing at all, and then suddenly it’s daylight and the phone is ringing again.


	2. Chapter 2

It is winter, senior year. Stan picks up his cell phone without checking the caller ID and Kenny is on the other end of the line.

“What’s up, bitch? Where you at?”

“I’m leaving right now,” Stan says, peering into the hall mirror and shoving his fingers through his hair, trying to get the clay to sit right.

“I’ll pick you up. I’m walking that way.”

Kenny’s voice is jumping, like he’s already on the move. 

“Okay. I’ll meet you at the corner.”

Stan grabs the six-pack waiting on the floor by his feet. He can hear his parents arguing in the kitchen as they do the dishes. They don’t know that he’s taken the beer, but wouldn’t care anyway. They’re usually too caught up in their own shit to worry much about what Stan’s doing. As long as he stays in school and there are no cops banging down the door, he’s doing alright in their eyes.

“Cool,” Kenny says, coughing his smoker’s cough. “I have something, by the way.”

Stan pauses with his hand on the doorknob.

“Not more of that weed from Kevin. That was fucking lame last time, dude.”

“No. This is something else. I’m telling you, man. This shit is fucking A.”

Stan slams the door behind him, not bothering to say goodbye, and then waits, shivering, on the corner for Kenny to appear. He texts Kyle, one-handed, with icy fingers: ‘Think K is planning on getting us well & truly fucked up tonight’

Then, as an afterthought: ‘Hope funeral wasn’t too horrible’

He shuffles his feet and hugs the beer to his chest, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet to generate heat. Kyle messages back a second later.

‘No way, dude. I’m not taking that again. I was sick for two days last time.’

Stan replies: ‘Something different this time. But yeah me too’

A second message from Kyle pops up at the same time that Stan hits ‘send’.

‘It was okay. Mom cried a lot. At the wake now, but I hardly know anyone here. Think we’re all about to leave.’

‘Cool dude. See you soon’

‘Later.’

Stan pockets his phone and pulls a glove over his bare hand, just as he looks up to see Kenny walking towards him. They clasp hands and bump shoulders together quickly in greeting, then turn and start walking in the direction of Token’s house.

“Kyle still at the thing for his uncle or whatever?” Kenny says, sniffling in the cold. He’s wearing a coat that’s too thin and no gloves. He keeps his hands inside his pockets

“Great aunt,” Stan says. “He’s on his way.”

Kenny grins sideways at Stan. His teeth flash in the light from a streetlamp overhead. “Think he’s going to hook up with Token tonight, or what?”

Stan clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and looks straight ahead, because Kenny is always on this shit, ever since Kyle came out to them the year before. When he stops to think about it, Stan can see that it’s really no different to how Kenny is with everyone — obsessed with knowing the ins and outs of who is doing who, how often and how hard; trying his best to matchmake along the way.

He’s used to having to overshare with Kenny every time he so much as looks at a girl, but Kyle’s a private guy and Stan is sure that coming out in a small town is hard enough, without having to constantly update your straight friends on whether you’ve managed to bang any of the handful of other gay men around. 

And anyway, while Stan’s happy for Kyle and loves him unconditionally regardless of who he wants to fuck, thinking about Kyle having sex is kind of on a par with imagining his parents going at it — especially when that means imagining Kyle getting nailed by another dude.

“I don’t know, man,” Stan says. “I don’t think either of them really care.” 

“They’re both honour roll. They could have loads of over-competitive A-plus sex. Just like math class.”

Kenny gives Stan two sarcastic thumbs up and Stan smiles weakly. 

“Don’t lie. You know you’ve seen them flirting,” Kenny adds, and Stan has to give him that. He has caught a few intense looks and lame jokes between the two, but he’s not been thinking too hard about what that might mean, even though, in the pit of his stomach, he already knows. 

Rather than say that out loud, he says, “Just because they’re the only two single gay guys in our grade doesn’t mean they have to settle for each other.”

“It’s not settling. I bet you mad cash that Kyle would be an awesome lay, dude. No jokes.”

“Kenny.”

“I’m just saying. If I had to. With a dude. You know? And Token’s not bad either. Plus, he’s fucking rich.”

“Okay.”

They’re approaching the lights of Cartman’s place now and Kenny pauses, stopping Stan with a hand to his arm. 

“Listen,” he says. “I’ve got some really good shit. But I told Cartman we’d do it before we get there. I don’t want to have it all on me when we go in. People are saying that the Blacks have security on the door. And the size of the place? It’s probably true. I’m not taking the risk.

“What about Kyle?”

“I’ll save him a little.”

Cartman meets them at the door.

“Hey, homos,” he says. “Go round back. You get it, Kenny?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Sweet.”

Cartman grabs his scarf from the peg in the hall, yells over his shoulder that he is leaving, and then slams the door without waiting to hear his mom’s reply.

He leads them around the side of his house and into the backyard, where they huddle together on the patio.

Kenny unzips his jacket and pulls out something small and black that looks like a makeup compact.

“What is this?” Stan asks, watching Kenny’s shivering fingers as he prises the little case open.

“Coke. From Laura,” Kenny says. 

Laura is the rich girl from North Park that Kenny sees off and on. Stan’s only met her once. She has perfect skin and blonde hair that looks like it came out of a shampoo commercial. It’s pretty clear that she’s only slumming it, but that Kenny likes her way more than he would ever let on.

“This is her gear,” Kenny says, removing a tiny silver spoon, the size of a pair of tweezers, from the side of the compact and dipping it into the white powder inside.

“Don’t we need to make a line or whatever?” Cartman says.

“Trust me. This is easier. Hold this.” Kenny places the compact onto Stan’s outstretched palm and uses a finger to press one nostril closed and then the other as he snorts the powder from the little spoon. He makes it look easy.

Cartman’s next, taking huge, noisy sniffs of the stuff, then squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head melodramatically.

“Holy mother of fuck,” Cartman says, thrusting the silver spoon at Stan.

For a second, Stan’s not sure this is a good idea. He takes the spoon hesitantly, wishing that Kyle was here to oversee this shit. He’d know whether this was okay or not.

But Kyle’s still on the road and it’s not like Stan can call him up to run it past him. He already gets enough shit from these guys about how much he and Kyle lean on one another, without making it look like he has to run every decision he makes past the one and only super-best.

“How much?” Stan says, holding the compact out to Kenny, who takes it, loads the spoon and then passes that back to him.

“Try that. It’ll work quick.”

Stan copies what he has seen in movies. He presses his fingertips to the side of his nose and inhales hard through one nostril, and then the other. It’s probably too hard, because he feels it immediately at the back of his throat, a weird chemical taste that tickles and makes him cough.

“I don’t feel anything,” Cartman is saying, while Stan is still trying to shake off the burning sensation. He’s vaguely aware of Kenny taking the spoon out of his hand and Cartman snorting more, but he’s kind of preoccupied by the fact that his nostrils have suddenly turned numb.

“This is a stupid idea,” Stan hears himself say, and Kenny just laughs at him.

“You say that every time we take anything. Wait until Kyle’s on board. You’ll love it then.”

“Fucking fags,” Cartman says, as he turns around and lifts the lid of his mom’s unused barbecue, retrieving a bottle of Smirnoff that he obviously stashed there earlier.

Stan picks up his beers from the icy patio and the the three of them head off, walking the ten minutes to Token’s house.

There’s no guards on the gate when they arrive, just a buzzer to press to be let in. When Stan leans on it, he doesn’t hear Token say hello, just a mess of music and shouting and then the click of the latch sliding free.

It’s a pretty big do. There are kids from North Park there too, but not Laura, Kenny says, because she’s in Aspen with her folks. 

Stan doesn't think the coke is doing much — but then again, maybe it is, because the party feels wild from the moment they step through the door. The lights in the kitchen are oh-so bright, especially after the dark of the living room, where music is pumping and people are slumped on sofas in cackling heaps. 

Some of the kids from North Park are totally awesome. Stan talks to them for a while and laughs a lot. He drinks three beers pretty fast and Kenny keeps coming over and hugging him, then trying to lift him off his feet, which is pretty retarded because Kenny is half his size, all wire, no real muscle. Eventually Kenny slips and falls on his ass right in the middle of the kitchen floor, which is even funnier still.

Then he is in the living room, trying to sit in the same armchair as Cartman so that they can hear each other speaking over the sound of the music. There isn’t really room and Stan doesn't really care about what Cartman’s saying. He’s mostly just sitting on the arm of the chair and nodding a lot, taking sips from his fourth beer and watching a couple of girls dancing over by the stereo — the kind of self-conscious shuffling that always happens when girls try to kick the dancing off too early, before people are wasted enough to stop caring about what they look like.

“Hot steaming piles of shit,” Cartman says then, looking towards the living room door. He swigs his vodka and passes the bottle to Stan. “Party’s over. It was fucking nice while it lasted.”

Stan looks up to see Kyle standing in the doorway, backlit by the hall lights. He’s dressed in a slim-fitting black suit, with a white shirt and skinny black tie. He looks good, Stan thinks. The suit makes him stand out from everyone else in the room. That and the fact that he’s still sober and lucid.

Kenny’s right; Token would not be settling if he were to get with Kyle. Objectively, he’s a nice-looking guy. He’s as tall as Stan, but more slender, and has somehow grown into himself in a way that none of the rest of them really have yet. Kyle’s like a proper adult already. He has this androgynous quality, too — pretty eyes, high cheekbones, but a strong jaw — that a lot of people find confusing. It’s not uncommon for Stan to catch someone doing kind of a double-take when they see Kyle for the first time, not that Kyle would ever notice that himself. 

He’s looking around the room and smiles when he spots Stan. He starts to head over, but Kenny comes between them, putting a hand on Kyle’s chest and leaning close so that he can speak into his ear. Kyle looks at Kenny, frowning. His lips move over the music.

Stan starts to get up and notices that Token is watching them too, though he turns away when he catches Stan’s eye. Kenny has his arm around Kyle’s shoulders now and is leading him out of the room. 

Stan grabs another beer from a cooler on the floor and heads after them, pushing through groups of kids he doesn’t know. 

He follows his friends up the stairs and manages to catch Kyle’s elbow just as Kenny is tugging him through the bathroom door.

“Hey dude,” Kyle says, and then laughs. “Woah you’re hitting it tonight, huh?”

“What?” Stan says, because he feels totally fine, even if he does somehow stumble over one of Kyle’s feet as they head through the door. Kyle catches him with a hand on his arm and closes the door behind them when Kenny whistles at him impatiently. 

Kenny’s already sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and has the compact open on his knee. He’s making chopping motions with the little spoon.

“Broflovski. This shit isn’t going to do itself,” Kenny says. 

Kyle nudges Stan out of the way so that he can slide the bolt on the door and then goes to sit on the edge of the tub.

“You’re not meant to mix cocaine and alcohol, dude. It’s bad for your liver,” he says.

“My life is bad for my liver, Kyle. Jesus Christ. You’re bad for my liver. Do you want it or not?”

Kyle looks at Kenny for a moment, then wraps his hand around Kenny’s wrist to steady it, bends forwards and sniffs the powder from the spoon. He takes several quick breaths, fingers clenching and then lets go of Kenny and sits back.

“Nice?” Kenny asks.

“Horrible,” Kyle says, which makes Kenny laugh and slap Kyle’s shoulder.

“Good boy,” Kenny says, and then holds up the spoon to Stan. “Stanley, come help me finish this motherfucking coke.”

Kyle looks up, rubbing at the end of his nose with his knuckles. His pupils are already dilating. Stan drops to his knees on the bathmat, taking the spoon from Kenny.

“Cartman might want more.”

“Fuck him, dude.”

So, Stan snorts more of the cocaine, and so does Kyle. Kenny takes a big hit, cursing when his nose immediately starts to bleed.

“How much did you take?” Kyle asks.

“Not enough to die,” Kenny says. He tugs piles of toilet paper off the roll and then seizes Kyle’s hand, pulling him up to his feet. “Come on. Did you say hey to Token yet? Bet he’ll love you in that suit.”

“It’s a funeral suit,” Kyle says, but allows Kenny to pull him out of the bathroom, only glancing round at the last second to check that Stan is coming too.

By the time they reach the bottom of the stairs, the music sounds louder and all of the lights are surrounded by hazy halos. When Stan turns his head, his vision takes longer than normal to catch up with the movement.

Wendy turns up with a tray of plastic shot glasses in neon colours and they all knock back whatever is in them.

“Sambuca,” she says. “Bebe and I hate it. We’re trying to get rid of them.” 

They wind up in the yard, because Kenny wants to smoke, shivering their asses off despite the patio heaters.

Kyle has a bottle of some weird hipster lager and Stan has another Bud. They stand together, staring out at the dark lawn while Kenny is heading over to get a light from one of the North Park kids who are clustered round the gazebo.

“You okay, dude?” Stan asks.

“Yeah,” Kyle says. “It was pretty shit, though. I mean, it was horrible. You know? It's always horrible.”

“Yeah, man. My grandpa's was so bad.”

“For my mom, not for me. But it sucks to see her lose it.” Kyle pauses to swig his beer. “I just wish I'd liked Aunt Nancy more myself.”

“Totally.”

Kyle turns to look at him. “Do you think this coke is bullshit, man? I don’t really feel anything.”

“Me neither,” Stan says, which isn’t exactly true. He feels something. He’s just not sure he could put it into words, and anyway Kyle is still talking quickly. 

“I think I want to get fucked up tonight, dude. You know what you said earlier? I think I kind of want that now.”

“You want some vodka? Cartman has a bottle.”

Kyle nods, so Stan goes to look for it. He can’t find Cartman, though, and then gets distracted talking to Bebe while he’s searching through the bottles on the kitchen counter for something else worth drinking. 

By the time he gets back to the patio, Kyle’s not there. Neither is Kenny, and the North Park kids are giving him weird looks, so Stan heads back inside and wanders through the rooms until he spots his friends in the corner of the living room, where everything is dark and loud. They are standing close but speaking in raised voices to be heard over the music.

“Kenny, I'm not being a dick, but I really don't need your help,” Kyle half shouts, shoving Kenny in the shoulder and pushing him back a step.

“I'm just saying.” Kenny looks pointedly across the room to where Token is standing by the stereo with Clyde and some other guys. “Jealousy is an aphrodisiac like nothing else.”

“What are you doing?” Stan asks.

“We’re going to make Token jealous,” says Kenny.

“You're such a fucking head case,” Kyle says, but he's smiling as Kenny steps close again.

“Let me,” Kenny says, “I'm tripping.”

And then suddenly they are kissing. They’re both grinning the whole time, like it’s some sort of big joke, but in the space between the movement of their lips, Stan catches a glimpse of Kyle’s tongue. 

He feels a kick of arousal watching them. But that’s nothing to be alarmed by. He can get half turned on by all kinds of weird shit at the best of times.

“Dudes, sick!” Cartman yells from somewhere behind them.

It feels long, like it’s happening in slo-mo, but it’s really only a few seconds before they separate, both still grinning. Stan looks over at Token, probably pretty unsubtly.

“He looks pissed, dudes.”

“Goddamnit,” Kyle says, “Thanks, Kenny.”

“Pleasure to be of service,” Kenny says. He catches Stan's eye and winks at him as he says this, but Stan doesn't get his meaning and so just frowns back.

Across the room, Token turns aways. He takes a big, hard swig of the bottle in his hand as he does so.

“I’ll talk to him,” Kyle says and makes a move like he's going to head over there, but something makes Stan catch him by the hand, stopping him.

"Let him cool off a second, man. He looks like he wants to deck someone,” Stan says. "Not you,” he adds quickly, “Probably Kenny. But still."

Kyle seems like he might argue, but then he catches sight of Cartman’s forgotten bottle of Smirnoff, which Kenny is holding out to him.

"Okay. You're right,” he says, reaching for the bottle. “I want to have a good night.”

From there on, things get kind of patchy for Stan. At one point Kenny pulls them both into a dark corner to share the last bit of Laura’s cocaine.

“This shit is so good,” he says. Then, pulling Stan close with an arm around his neck: “She text me three times tonight, man. I think I might be in love with her. Do you think she loves me too?”

By the time Cartman finds them, they have already finished most of his vodka. Obviously, he loses his shit over it, blaming the whole thing on Kyle in classic fat-ass style, until Kyle tells him to fuck off already and tips the last of the vodka all over Cartman's shoes.

Kenny manages to get between them just in time — he has a sixth sense for predicting violence — giving Kyle enough time to make a run for it, Stan hot on his heels, brushing past Token in the hallway.

“Oh, hey,” Kyle pauses long enough to say to him, but Stan grabs a handful of his jacket and urges him upstairs, away from the crowds, away from Cartman’s heavy fists.

They find their way to an empty bedroom, which feels like a little oasis in the middle of all the carnage. 

They sit on the bed and talk for a while about how Kenny is totally deluded about Laura and her feelings for him. Then they talk about how Cartman will probably die a virgin, and how even if neither of them can manage to hold down a proper relationship, at least they have both moved past that point, which is really all that matters right now. 

“What's it like to have sex with a man?” Stan says, because he’s wanted to ask Kyle for ages and now feels brave enough to, probably because he can still taste the cocaine in the back of his throat.

“Stan,” Kyle says, shaking his head. “You are not asking me that.”

“Have you ever done it with Kenny?” Stan asks next, half-joking.

“No. Have you?”

“How about Token?”

At that, Kyle hesitates in a way that makes Stan’s cheeks feel suddenly hot.

“I'm sorry,” he says, before Kyle can respond. “You don't have to answer that. I know it's none of my business. But I want you to know that you can talk to me about this stuff. I won't make it weird.”

“Okay, right now? This is already pretty fucking weird, dude. Not going to lie.”

“I don’t mean to make it weird. I’m just. You know.”

“What?”

“Curious.”

Stan doesn’t know what makes him do it. Maybe it’s because Kenny made it look so easy. One second, Kyle is smiling at him, that same old half-buzzed grin that Stan has seen on his face every house party since the dawn of time, the same grin he was wearing right before he and Kenny…

And the next second, Stan has leant across and kissed him, without a second thought. He just does it, the same way he would kiss a girl he likes, careless, easy. The alcohol makes Stan confident, like it always does. He knows he’s a good kisser. People have told him so.

Kyle makes a little noise of shock when their lips touch, nothing dramatic, just a small intake of breath that sounds sexy as hell right now. He doesn’t pull away, not immediately, and when he does, it is only to look Stan straight in the eye. His pupils flick back and forth, like he’s reading, searching for some meaning in Stan’s face. 

Whatever he’s looking for, he must see it there.

The first kiss had been kind of soft, but when Kyle leans in and takes charge of the next one, it’s all force. It takes Stan by surprise if he’s honest. Kyle is skinny, but he’s strong. He has big hands and one of them grips the back of Stan’s skull, his fingers pushing through Stan’s hair as he pulls him closer, and slips him the tongue.

Stan groans, loudly. His hands have automatically found their way to Kyle’s ass, squeezing through the tailored pants of that suit — the suit that Kyle looks fucking hot in, Stan remembers. He’s been wanting to peel that thing off Kyle all night, and watch it come undone, button by button. 

“You’re hot,” Stan manages to say, in between kisses.

“Shut up,” Kyle says and bites Stan’s bottom lip.

The music from downstairs in thudding in the walls, but the room is silent apart from that. There’s only the sound of their lips and tongues and then the zipper on Stan’s jeans, as Kyle slides it down and reaches his hand inside.

“Fuck,” Stan gasps, as Kyle’s fingers close around his dick, which is already hard, pushing against the fabric of his shorts.

Kyle is panting a little. His gaze keeps flicking up to Stan, checking that he’s okay.

He looks pretty damn beautiful, with his lips parted and his cheeks flushed, his eyes wide and dark from the drugs and arousal. Stan wants to kiss him again, so he does, stroking his thumb over Kyle’s cheekbone and using an arm around his waist to pull him closer, like he means it — which he does.

They make out like that, pressed close, not enough air, dicks desperately hard — Kyle’s is too, Stan can feel it against his hip — for what feels like a long time. It could be seconds, it could be hours. Stan’s lost track.

There’s a distant crashing sound from downstairs, something like smashing glass. It makes Kyle pull back.

“Shit,” he says.

For moment, Stan thinks it’s over, that Kyle might have come to his senses and realised that Stan is not Token, or Kenny, or whoever else Kyle had made plans to be with tonight. But then Kyle is shrugging out of his jacket, pulling his tie loose, and incredibly, falling to his knees in front of Stan. He looks up as he pushes Stan’s thighs apart and moves so that he’s between them. His hand is reaching back inside Stan’s jeans, stroking him through the cotton of his underwear.

“Holy shit,” Stan says.

“I know. What the fuck, right?”

“Don’t stop.”

“I won’t if you don’t. Take these off.” Kyle tugs at the waistband of Stan’s jeans until Stan lifts his ass and lets Kyle slide the denim off his hips and down around his ankles. 

His underwear is next and Stan doesn’t have time to freak out, doesn’t have a chance to even think, because Kyle’s mouth is around his dick and it is absolutely the hottest thing that Stan has felt. He collapses against the bed, overwhelmed with the feeling of Kyle’s lips, Kyle’s tongue, Kyle’s throat, Kyle’s strong hands on his thighs — all of it working together in harmony. It’s the best blow job, the best sex that Stan has ever had. It’s clear that Kyle has done this before, probably more than once. 

Stan’s dick throbs. That thought makes him angry and turned on at the same time. He has to prop himself up on his elbows to look, just to see for real that it is his dick in Kyle’s mouth now. 

He’s not prepared, though, for what an awesome sight that is. As he stares down, mouth open, Kyle looks up, through his eyelashes, with his cheeks hollowed around the length of Stan’s cock. Their gazes meet and then Stan is coming, in an instant jolt, so hard and sudden that it’s almost painful.

He thinks Kyle might swallow. He doesn’t know. He has already collapsed back on the bed by the time any kind of awareness filters back in. 

The room is dark and quiet. The music is still playing, no longer drowned out by the pounding of blood in Stan’s veins. He realises that he has his arm over his eyes and moves it to see Kyle climbing onto the bed and lying down beside him. He takes Kyle’s face in his hands and kisses him, tasting the sourness of his own spunk on Kyle’s tongue.

Kyle groans, rocking his hips onto Stan’s thigh. He’s still hard, so Stan reaches down and unbuttons his fly, gets Kyle’s dick in his hand for the first time. He strokes experimentally, feels how it makes Kyle shudder, how his lips part and tremble at Stan’s touch. 

“I want to fuck you,” Stan says, without thinking, because it’s what he feels in that moment, and he supposes that makes it true. “So badly. I’d do it now if I could.”

“You can,” Kyle says, and then makes this noise as he comes, a sound that Stan won’t forget. He’ll hear it for days after, even when he’s trying to forget. 

They don’t exactly cuddle afterwards, but they lie close, fingers interlaced, listening to one another breathe. 

Eventually, Stan falls asleep. 

When he wakes up again, the room is cold. The light coming through the curtains is far too bright. And now everything in the entire world feels wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

Christian drops Kyle off at his place on Saturday morning. It’s a long way, but he’s heading across town anyway, he says, to visit his sister.

He drives a BMW. It can’t be that easy to handle in the snow, but he’s obviously got practice, because he drives it fast and blares music that’s far too loud for the morning after a night of drinking. Kyle wonders when he bought the car. It smells new, which means that Christian is obviously going through a painfully classic midlife crisis.

As they drive across town, Christian talks a lot about all the business travel he did when he was working in corporate law. He lists his favourite hotels in Geneva and Singapore, and tells Kyle which airlines have the best business class seats. He explains legal concepts in the most basic detail, as if he’s talking to a total moron.

Kyle doesn’t mention the fact that he studied law himself at Yale. He just keeps his shades on and pretends to be too hungover to talk much.

It’s a huge fucking relief when they finally turn into Kyle’s street and pull up outside of his building. 

That is, until Kyle notices that Kenny is there waiting for him. He does this sometimes — turns up at Kyle’s place on Saturday morning after falling asleep on the couch in the back office of the bar where he works. Rather than go all the way back to his own apartment, he’ll come to hang at Kyle’s, which is only a couple of blocks from the bar, before heading back to start his next shift.

Kenny steps out of the building’s heated porch as the car pulls up. He’s holding a brown paper bag in his hand, and even from a distance, Kyle can see his raised eyebrows. 

"Goddamnit," Kyle says, unbuckling his seatbelt. He’s distracted and so is startled when Christian leans over and tries to kiss him goodbye. "Woah, woah.” Kyle holds his hand up. “We're done with that."

Christian peers out of the window and nods to where Kenny is standing.

"Why? That your boyfriend?"

"Yeah," Kyle lies, without a moment’s hesitation. And then for good measure, he adds: “He's a cage fighter.”

Christian lets out a low whistle.

"Say no more. Good luck explaining where you’ve been all night. Afraid you’re on your own with that."

His car disappears in a screech of tires, leaving Kyle to face Kenny’s unique brand of judgement, which mostly involves thrusting his hips against the streetlamp outside the apartment building whilst humming the kind of soundtrack you hear playing over pro-am porn. 

The thrusting only stops when Kyle’s neighbour, Mr Parker steps out of the building with a bag of trash in his hand.

“Howdy,” Kenny says, grinning at him.

Mr Parker, who already hates Kyle for epitomising the hipster invasion that is ruining his neighbourhood, just scowls and deposits the garbage bag a bit too close to Kenny’s foot. 

As he heads back inside, Kyle can hear him muttering something about what years of the “goddamned Democrats” have done to the country.

“Guess he didn’t like my dance,” Kenny says. He’s wearing a huge sweater, but no coat, and has a pair of wraparound shades perched on his head, half-buried in his messy hair.

“Nobody liked your dance. Hips shouldn't move like that,” Kyle says.

“What are you talking about? I bet your hips were going like that all night long.”

Kyle sighs and pulls his keys out of his pocket. “I’m too hungover to speak to you.”

“Aw, but I bought you a pain au raisin and a macchiato." Kenny holds up the brown paper bag and shakes it enticingly. “They’re from that douchebag deli you like…”

Kyle’s stomach rumbles as he stares at it. 

“Oh, fine,” he says, turning to open the door.

They trudge up the two flights of stairs to Kyle’s floor, Kenny humming ‘All Night Long’ by Lionel Ritchie the entire way. 

"You know,” he says, as they are nearing the top, “When we were kids, if I’d had to put money on who out of all us would turn out to be the biggest slut, I would never have betted on you."

"We can't all be paragons of virtue like you turned out to be,” Kyle says.

"I'm just talking odds-wise, dude.” 

When they were around twenty, it was like someone had picked Kyle and Kenny up, swapped them around and put them back down again on one another's trajectories.

Kenny, the kid who got suspended twice and very nearly kicked out of high school completely for possession of drugs, who barely scraped through his SATS, somehow ended up on the straight and narrow. By the time he was twenty-five, he was already running his own business, a cocktail bar in the middle of the coolest street in Denver. He’d also just married the love of his life — a rich, pretty girl from a good North Park family, who worked as a freelance photographer. 

Kyle, on the other hand, had made it to Yale, only to very nearly flunk out after it turned out that he wasn't as smart or as highbrow as he thought he was once you took him out of the backwards hometown environment. Worse still, he’d trashed the only long-term relationship he'd ever had, with Token Black — who he'd dated all through his last year of high school and first year of college — when, for no reason at all, he hooked up with one of Token's moron college buddies when they all went to Miami for spring break. 

Of course, Token dumped him on the spot when he found out. As he should have done. And since then, it’s been casual sex all the way. Not very good sex at that.

Kenny leans against the hall wall while Kyle unlocks the door to his apartment and lets them both inside.

It’s not the biggest apartment in the world, but it was cheap when Kyle got it, and prices in this part of town have gone through the roof in the last couple of years, so he’s down to make a nice profit when he eventually sells up and moves on. There’s exposed brickwork along two walls. At first, Kyle thought that looked pretty cool, but now it just makes it look like he’s trying too hard. He’s thinking about having it plastered over, to make the whole place look less douchey.

Kenny flops down onto the big brown leather couch that Kyle got second-hand at a place around the corner. The couch also makes it look like Kyle’s trying too hard, but it’s comfy as hell, so that’s not going anywhere. 

“So, tell me everything,” Kenny says, unpacking the pastries from the paper bag. “He seemed nice."

"He's full of shit,” Kyle says. “I hate myself."

“You know I like to think of myself as an honorary fag,” Kenny starts, which makes Kyle roll his eyes.

“Just because you kissed me one time in high school doesn’t mean you know everything about being gay, dude."

“It’s not just you. It was that—“

“Guy from the mall, too, I know. That was a dare, though.”

“My point is: you know that I totally get this is, like, the ‘lifestyle’ and whatever,” Kenny says, watching as Kyle eases the lid off his coffee cup. “But you’re not going to find what you're looking for at the end of some random dude's dick, man. Just saying."

"Are you my mother now?"

"Your mom, huh? I was thinking it was more the kind of thing Stan Marsh might say."

Kyle pauses in the middle of blowing on the surface of his macchiato and looks up at Kenny in surprise.

"What's that for? Why are you bringing him up?"

"I saw him on TV yesterday."

"So did I."

"And then he Facebooked me this morning. Asked me if I wanted to get a beer with him.”

It takes Kyle a moment to process that.

"Are you fucking joking?"

"Nope. I shit you not."

"What did you tell him?"

Kenny shrugs. "Well, nothing yet. I wanted to speak to you first." 

"It's got nothing to do with me."

"So, then I'll have a beer with him."

"Fine."

They stare at one another, until Kenny looks away and says, "I thought you might want to come. Water under the bridge and all that."

"I don't."

“Cool. Whatever, dude. I might ask Cartman, then. We’re going to go Monday. Just at my place. So, you know. If you change your mind.”

“I won’t. Who the fuck goes out on a Monday?”

“It’s the only day he could do with his schedule.”

Kenny takes a bite out of his danish and then licks flakes of pastry from the side of his hand. Kyle realises that his pain au raisin is still sitting untouched on the coffee table. He reaches for it slowly, still trying to wrap his head around the idea of Stan Marsh getting in touch with Kenny after all these years, without reaching out to Kyle himself.

That’s Stan all over, though. Always taking the path of least resistance. 

“The TV said that he might quit hockey,” Kenny says with his mouth full, “What’s that about?

“It’s spin,” Kyle says. “Total bullshit, probably. You know what we journalists are like.”

Kenny grins. “Heartless scum.”

“Exactly.”

They don’t mention Stan again after that. Kyle flicks the TV on and they talk about basketball and _House of Cards_ and the new publicity shots that Laura is taking for the bar.

It’s only as Kenny is heading off around lunchtime, holding open the apartment door with one foot, that he says, “I meant it about Monday, dude. You should just come if you change your mind. I know he’d love to see you.”

“You don't know that at all,” Kyle says, and then waits for Kenny to move his foot so that he can close the door.

* 

Stan’s mom is wearing a blue cocktail dress and yellow rubber gloves when she finally answers the door. She blinks for a moment, as if she’s surprised to see him standing on her doorstep.

“Oh, Kyle. I thought you were the driver,” she says. “Did you see a cab out there?”

Kyle looks over his shoulder at the dark and empty street.

“No, I don’t think so. Is Stan home?”

Sharon steps aside to let Kyle into the warmth of the house and then lingers in the hallway, watching as he unlaces his boots and hangs up his coat.

“He’s upstairs. Go on up.”

“Thanks. You look nice.”

Sharon huffs, looking annoyed by the compliment.

“It’s the National Geological Society’s black tie gala. We were meant to leave twenty minutes ago, but the cab isn't here and Randy will not get his butt in gear.”

She turns around and grips the bannister with one gloved hand as she bellows up the stairs.

“Randy Marsh! You have to the count of ten before I leave without you! And don't think that I won’t be able to pick up a replacement date when I get there!”

The Marsh household has become more chaotic since Stan’s sister left for college. The house still has the same old comforting smell, but there’s been a change in the air. Kyle senses it every time he comes here now. 

“You go ahead, Kyle,” Sharon says, ushering him up the stairs. “Stanley never comes out of that room these days.”

On the landing Kyle nearly collides with Randy, who is trying to tie his tie and put on his jacket, all whilst running for the front door. He doesn’t bother to say hello, just pushes Kyle aside and then flies past in a blur of flapping fabric.

“The cab’s here!” Sharon yells, struggling to pull her rubber gloves off, as Randy thunders down the stairs. “Stan, we’re leaving! Be good!”

Randy is stamping his feet into his shoes, already halfway out the door. “Sharon, come on, come on!”

She grabs her coat from the hook as Randy is sprinting off down the path. She looks back and catches sight of Kyle standing at the top of her stairs.

“Kyle, there’s money for pizza on the kitchen table if you boys want to call in an order. We’ll be back late. Tell Stan to be good. But don’t wait up.”

“Sharon!”

“Bye, boys!”

The front door slams, opens again long enough for Sharon to toss her rubber gloves onto the hall table, and then slams once more with a rattle. There’s the roar of a car engine and then absolute silence.

Kyle stands there on the landing, surrounded by Marsh family portraits, with his sock-covered toes sinking into the familiar peach-coloured carpet. 

Today is Tuesday. It has been three days since the party at Token’s house. Ever since then, Stan has been screening his calls, ignoring his texts and avoiding him at school. Kyle has turned up on the Marsh doorstep as a last resort.

He wonders what Stan’s parents would think if they knew that Stan wasn’t speaking to him right now. Would they be so free to leave him alone in their home if they knew that three nights ago, he had gotten down on his knees and blown their only son in the middle of someone else’s bedroom, his head spinning with cocaine and half a bottle of vodka? They probably wouldn’t be so keen to offer him pizza money if they knew all of that.

Kyle walks slowly down the corridor and knocks on the door of Stan’s bedroom, before he can lose his nerve. There’s already a nasty twisty feeling in his gut, a sense of impending doom that he’s not used to having around Stan. Cartman, yes. But never Stan.

There is no answer, so Kyle takes a deep breath and opens the door, hoping against hope that Stan’s not in there jacking off, because walking in on that would do absolutely nothing to fix the awkwardness that exists between them right now.

The room is dark. The beside lamp is switched on, but the only other light comes from the muted TV on top of the dresser, which is showing some hockey game, and the screen of Stan’s laptop which is open in front of him on the desk.

Stan has his headphones on and is busy dicking around on Garage Band. His acoustic guitar is on the floor beside him, leaning against the desk drawers. He doesn’t hear Kyle come in.

Of all the rooms in the house, this one smells the most familiar. Kyle has spent hours in here. It’s the same room that Stan has had since they were in elementary school — there are the same old glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling and the same blue stain on the carpet, where they spilled paint as they tried to finish a last-minute geography project. All the history is still there, Stan has just patchworked over the top of it as he has grown older. The Terrance and Philip posters have been replaced by images of bands and the floor is covered with school books and sports equipment, instead of toys. The pinboard by the door has a million photographs tacked to it. Kyle himself is in at least half of them.

He closes the door, goes over and taps Stan on the shoulder.

“Mom, what?” Stan snaps, yanking his headphones off and whirling around in his chair. 

He freezes when he sees who it is. “Oh, hey dude,” he says then, so casual, in a way that makes Kyle’s blood boil.

“Hey, douchebag,” Kyle says, and can’t believe that he didn’t realise until right now just how fucking angry he is. “Is your phone broken?”

“Kyle,” Stan starts, but Kyle cuts him off.

“I can’t think of any other reason for you to be ignoring my calls right now except that you’re the worst kind of shit.”

Stan gets to his feet and, incredibly, starts to walk away, which is just about the worst possible outcome of this discussion. Kyle catches him by the arm to stop him.

“I’m not going to talk to you if you’re going to shout at me,” Stan says. He shakes off Kyle’s grip.

They stare at one another for a moment until Kyle’s anger disappears and is again replaced with that awful feeling, a kind of queasy sinking in his stomach. 

"Dude, it doesn't have to mean anything,” he says. “You were totally jacked up on drugs and beer. That gets you a free pass. Come on. Don't make it weird."

"It's already weird,” Stan says, “This isn't normal. At least, not for me it isn't. I don't make a habit of letting guys suck me off."

Kyle swallows, tasting acid. He bites back a comment about normality, saving that up for another time, when the stakes aren’t quite so high. He also doesn’t mention the fact that he never heard Stan complaining about being sucked off at the time. Instead, Kyle forces a smile.

"So then don't make it weirder. It was the coke, dude. For Christ's sake. I made out with Kenny.”

"I fucking know you did. I had to watch that shit," Stan says, suddenly aggressive in a way that Kyle’s never seen before, at least not outside of the skating rink. When the shove comes, it catches him completely off guard. It’s not really that hard, but it’s enough to send him stumbling backwards into the desk, knocking the desk chair, which catches the guitar and makes it crash to the floor.

While the guitar’s strings are still reverberating, Kyle’s heart is thudding in his chest. He looks at Stan, who is staring back at him in shock. 

“Sorry,” Stan says. He steps forwards and reaches out as if he’s about to touch Kyle, but then seems to think better of it and stops in his tracks.

Kyle holds up his hands. He thinks he might be shaking a bit. He can see that Stan certainly is. The situation feels unreal, like some out of body experience. They don’t fight like this. He knows that Stan’s not homophobic, so can’t tell what this is about. 

“Okay,” he says slowly, trying to keep his voice calm. “I don't know how to process this level of anger from you right now. I'm going to leave. We need to talk about this, though. You are going to call me when you’re over it. Okay?”

Stan doesn't answer. He turns away and then throws himself down onto the bed as Kyle is heading for the door. Kyle pauses with one hand on the doorhandle, giving him the chance to sit up again and make it right. 

"I don't want to lose you over something so stupid," he says. "Stan."

But Stan just covers his face with his arm.

And so there’s nothing left for Kyle to do but turn his back and walk home through the cold to his parents’ house, where everyone acts as if nothing at all has happened — as if the stars have not just fallen out of the sky.

*

On Monday morning Kyle listens to Fleetwood Mac on the way to work, but has to turn it off because it’s making him think of Stan. 

‘Never Going Back Again’ is exactly the kind of maudlin shit that he was always trying to learn to play on his guitar when they were kids. It’s the sort of music that Cartman would refer to as “fagtastic, hippie tunes”, but that would make Stan tear up if it started playing at a party when he’d had too much to drink. 

In fact, Kyle remembers Stan playing this exact song at a cookout that Bebe held one summer, while a bunch of them sat together round the campfire. He was almost note-perfect by that point, after practising in his room for weeks. Kyle held his beer for him while he played and led the applause afterwards, the neck of the beer bottle gripped between his teeth. 

But that was back when they had been the invincible super-bests and he could still do no wrong in Stan's eyes. 

There’s been a problem with the heating over the weekend and the office feels icy when Kyle arrives. His colleagues are starting up their computers and laptops, still wrapped in coats and scarves and gloves. There’s a small crowd of people around the coffee machine in the corner, desperate for something to warm them up. 

Kyle dumps his satchel on his desk and sighs at the pile of proofs waiting there to be checked. He’s just thinking that the morning can’t possibly get worse when Christian comes sauntering up to him, holding a steaming cup in his hand. 

“You did well to get out of that one,” Christian says, with a grin.

Kyle busies himself with flicking through the proofs, pretending to be looking for something.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I wasn't expecting to see you turn up in one piece. I thought at least a black eye or a few missing teeth...”

Kyle looks at him, annoyed. In the sober light of day, Christian is not half as attractive as he first seemed. 

“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

“Your boyfriend. The cage fighter?”

“Oh. Right.” 

“Surprised he didn't tear you a new one.”

“Yeah, well. He can be remarkably understanding.”

“You mean you lied your ass off to him.”

“Christian. This is like, totally fun and all, but I really need to get some coffee,” Kyle says pointedly. 

And while Christian might be an asshole, he does at least have a few brain cells to rub together, so he gets the message.

“Sure,” he says, “I’ll catch you later.”

They have a features meeting first thing, gathered round the editor’s desk. Someone has dragged a couple of electric heaters over, creating a halo of warm air. Brian, the editor, stands in the middle of it and the rest of them all crowd in, trying to get closer to the glowing heat.

They run through the week’s pages and then Brian claps his hands together and says, “Right. Profiles. We’re getting low. We need to stock up. Get some in the bank.”

He looks around the group. Liza, the features editor, standing beside Kyle, raises her notebook and says. “I think we can get Neil Patrick Harris. I’m hashing the details out with the PR.”

“Didn’t we do him before?” one of the reporters asks.

“No, we tried to. But he left the country,” Liza says.

“Okay, keep them coming,” Brian says, circling his hand. “Forget who’s already in the pipeline. I want wishlist stuff. People to go after.”

“Who’s that kid from _Stranger Things_ ,” someone says, “my boys are obsessed with that.”

“I heard David Fincher’s going to be running some conference at the university next month. Bet he’ll be doing the circuit,” another reporter says. 

“Definitely try for him,” Brian says. “And who’s this kid?”

“Don’t know her name.”

“Find out.”

Kyle’s wracking his brain for someone he can pitch that won’t be a total nightmare to actually deliver on, when he hears someone say, “Stanley Marsh?”

He looks up to see Audrey, the new staff writer, with her pen poised over her notebook.

“Pretty good fit, I think. Local hero. Always does press. And there’s been all this talk of a career change,” she says.

Brian snaps his fingers and points at her.

“Perfect. Absolutely.” 

“The problem will be getting the right kind of access,” says Liza. “Yes, he does lots of press, but nothing in depth. And we’re going to need more that just a spot at a press conference. Do you have contact details?”

Audrey nods. “Same agent as Luke Tyne, I think. I interviewed him back in December. We’re on good terms.”

“Excellent,” Brian says. “Get onto it. Let’s see if we can turn that one around real quick. If he is thinking of quitting, we want the exclusive.”

“Well if access is what you want...” Christian says slowly, and then looks across the circle at Kyle. “Don't you think you'd be best placed to take this one, Kyle?"

Kyle feels the colour drain out of his face, as everyone turns to stare at him. He grips his coffee mug more tightly.

“No,” he says, “I don't think so.”

Brian is looking at Christian. “What makes you say that?”

“You know him don't you?” Christian prompts, still staring at Kyle. 

“We went to school together,” Kyle says, “but I haven't spoken to him in years.” 

“I thought you said you were best friends?” 

“Not anymore.”

Brian looks back and forth between them and then claps his hands together. “Well. Any connection is better than none. Kyle, you're on this,” he says.

That’s when the panic really sets in. 

“I'm too close to material. It wouldn't work. There's, like, a conflict of interest there, or something,” Kyle says desperately. But Brian just holds up one hand.

“You don't have to write it, but I want you to at least make the initial contact. Then you can hand it over to Audrey. Okay? Thanks, Kyle. Next?”

The rest of the meeting washes over Kyle, who stands there blankly and tries to think of a way out of this. At one point he catches Christian’s eye, but the guy just shrugs as if he’s done nothing wrong. It’s obviously karma. Kyle is being punished for sleeping with someone so smug and awful. 

As they all trudge back to their desks afterwards, Audrey hurries to fall in step with Kyle. The heating system has started to grind back to life and everyone is slowly peeling off their outer wear, one item at a time. Audrey has removed her coat but is still wearing a yellow bobble hat and fingerless gloves.

“Yum. You can hand any other gorgeous pro athlete friends over to me whenever you like,” she says.

Kyle doesn’t say anything. He smiles tightly at her, and then sits down at his desk, where he takes out his phone and to tries work up the motivation to text Kenny about going for that beer tonight after all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For stickstockstone. Thank you for your comments. They are always appreciated. :)

Eventually, Stan does calm down and he does call. 

He practises what he’s going to say ahead of time, but he still gets nervous as he’s thumbing Kyle’s number on speed-dial on his cell. His palms get sweaty and he has to juggle the phone from hand to hand while it’s ringing so that he can wipe them against his jeans.

It is Thursday now. They haven’t spoken all week, except on Tuesday night, when Kyle turned up at his house. It’s been surprisingly easy to avoid each other at school. They take hardly any of the same classes. Kyle’s in all of the advanced groups with Cartman and Wendy and Token. Stan’s somewhere in the middle and chose mostly different electives anyway. He has a few classes with Kenny and Clyde, but not even homeroom with Kyle.

That doesn’t mean it’s gone unnoticed. A few people have asked if something’s up, but Stan has just played ignorant. He’s pretty good at that.

Kyle picks up the call, which is a relief — Stan was expecting to get screened — but he doesn’t sound normal. He’s kind of tight with Stan, not himself. 

But Stan has his spiel prepared.

“Listen, dude. I’m sorry I dropped the ball. If you hate me now, I totally get it. I just fucking freaked out. I didn’t know what to do. But I acted like a jerk and it wasn’t fair. Can we put it behind us? I don’t want it to go like this.”

There’s movement on the other end of the line, a noise that sounds like the patio doors of Kyle’s house being slid open and then shut again. Then Kyle sighs.

“I don’t want it to go like this either,” he says. “And I don’t hate you. That was pretty shitty, though, dude. You made me feel like crap.”

“I know. I’m really sorry. I just didn’t know how to deal with all that. It was pretty far of out of my comfort zone.”

“It was the drugs, dude,” Kyle says again, which doesn’t make it any more true than the first time he said it.

Stan presses his lips together and stares up at the ceiling of his room, at the fragments of glow-in-the dark stickers that he tried to peel off years ago. 

What happened with them at the party last week was definitely not because of the drugs. At least not for Stan. They might have helped, but they weren’t to blame. 

The real problem is not that Stan is freaked out about what they did; he’s freaked out because he kind of wants to do it again. Kind of a lot. As in, he can't get the image of Kyle on his knees, looking up at him out of his mind. He dreams about it. 

So now he doesn't know how to be or what to say when he's with Kyle half the time. And being around Kyle has always been the easiest thing in the world.

That’s what scares him so much. That, and the fact that Kyle seems so able and willing to take it all in his stride. He acts like it meant nothing, as if it’s the kind of thing he does every weekend.

“It’s not like it’s going to happen again, you know? We don’t have to let it come between us,” Kyle says.

“Sure,” Stan says, around the giant lump that seems to be growing in his throat. 

The absolute priority is not to fuck things up any further between them. Preserving his friendship with Kyle, which is and always has been the most important relationship of Stan’s life, comes before everything else. 

That means not admitting to how many times he’s thought back on that night, or how it gives him a boner every time he remembers it.

It’s too complicated and too huge, impossible for Stan to wrap his head around. He’s nowhere near ready. All he can manage is this. Maintain the friendship. Ignore the rest. Nothing else matters. He knows the plan.

“So, we’re cool?” Kyle asks.

“Always.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ve been kind of going out of my mind, to be honest. It feels super weird not seeing you.”

“Me too.” Stan plucks at a loose thread at the bottom of his t-shirt, needing something to do with his hands. “But we’ll hang out tomorrow, right?”

They spend every Friday together, religiously. Sometimes they go to a movie or to the mall, or get hold of some beers and go get drunk by Stark’s Pond. Usually, though, they just hang out at one of their houses, playing video games, watching TV and being their usual dorky selves.

“Well, actually,” Kyle says, and then hesitates.

“What?”

“Token asked if I wanted to hang out at his tomorrow night. That’s cool, right?”

Immediately, Stan wants to say no, but that doesn’t make sense and clearly he can’t. That wouldn’t fit with the plan. It doesn’t matter that the thought of Kyle spending Friday night with Token makes Stan’s whole body feel cold.

“I know Fridays are our thing,” Kyle is saying, “but I didn’t know where we were. And I already told him I would, so…”

There’s a pause where Stan knows he needs to say something supportive, but can’t quite work himself up to do so. When Kyle speaks next, he sounds sort of nervous. But then again, the quiver in his voice could just be because he’s standing outside in the cold.

“I mean, I can tell him I’m busy after all. Like, if we need to talk, or…” 

“No. You don’t have to do that. Of course it’s cool,” Stan says, finally finding his voice.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Sure. Token’s a good guy. You’ll have fun.” Stan cringes at that last part. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“Okay. Well. I guess I’ll see you at school then. Want to have lunch?”

“Yeah. See you.” 

“Cool, I’ll text you. I’m going to go inside now. I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

“Okay. Later, bro.”

Stan hangs up the phone and then lies on his bed on his own for a long time, trying not to think too hard.

*

Over the next few weeks this slowly becomes the new reality. Everybody knows that Kyle and Token are, like, a thing now. 

Cartman really goes to town with the homophobic jokes for a week or so, but quickly runs out of steam when he realises that it’s not so fun to laugh at something when it’s true — especially when literally nobody seems to care about it. 

And really, nobody does seem to care, not even Kyle’s parents. Token becomes a tagalong, bolted onto their group, at around the same time that Laura does — the girl from North Park, who Kenny is still seeing, against all the odds. 

When the four of them do stuff together now, either Token or Laura or both of them will often turn up. For the first time, Stan knows what it must have felt like when he was dating Wendy through half of middle school and Kyle would seem pissed off whenever Stan invited her along to things without asking the rest of them.

Stan himself has been single, pretty much, since Wendy broke up with him at the start of tenth grade. He’s kind of casually dated another couple of girls, but it’s been nothing serious. And that’s been fine, because none of his friends have really had anything serious either. 

Until now. When Kyle and Kenny are suddenly both off the market at the same time and Stan is left sitting next to Cartman whenever they all go anywhere.

He gets it now. It’s a pain in the fucking ass.

It’s bearable though, until this night when some shitty club on the edge of town holds an underage night. Dumb chart music on the sound system and no booze except what you can sneak in. It sounds totally lame, but somebody, maybe Clyde, makes a decision that it would be fun to go ironically and have a totally awesome time just being ironic.

“You should ask Red to come,” Kenny tells him, the day before, as they are in the lunch line at the cafeteria. “She’s definitely into you, dude. And she likes the same weird music as you. You can stand there together and judge us all for dancing to Rihanna.”

“I don’t know,” Stan says, sliding his tray along and reaching for a jello cup.

“And it will give you something to do while Token and Kyle are macking on each other. You don’t want to be around that, dude. No need to do that to yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kenny stops and looks at him. “You know,” he says, with such a frank expression on his face that Stan has to drop his gaze and swallow hard, unable to speak for a moment.

So, Stan asks Red and she says yes, but only if they can make fun of how uncool it is the whole time. Stan is definitely down with that. He texts Kyle immediately, to make sure that he knows that Stan will be bringing someone.

‘Sweet,’ Kyle replies. ‘Wendy and Bebe are coming too, so won’t be too gaytastic for you guys.’

At the last minute, Kenny also decides to bring Laura along, and says he’s going to meet them there. Stan, Kyle, Red and Cartman all get a ride to the place with Token, in his midnight blue Land Rover that even Cartman is openly jealous of.

“You don’t mind if I ride up front, right?” Kyle asks Stan, as they head towards the car.

“Why would I?” 

Kyle shrugs. He looks cute today — kind of preppy in a button-down shirt and slim-fit slacks. He’s dressed like a college student who can buy his own beers and not like some high school kid who’s going to have to be sneaking sips from his friend’s hip flask all night long.

As Kyle slams the passenger door, Token leans one elbow on the back of the driver’s seat and twists to look behind him. He’s wearing a button-down too, almost the same as Kyle’s.

“We all belt and braces? I’m not getting pulled over because some douchebag isn’t wearing their safety belt.”

“Fuck you, Token,” Cartman says. 

Token just rolls his eyes and turns back to the wheel. “Okay, then. Let’s do this.”

He slips the car into gear and speeds away from his parents’ big, stupid house, the stereo playing some indie band that Stan remembers Kyle raving about the week before.

Cartman spends most of the drive telling Stan how great the new Grand Theft Auto is, while Red looks bored and texts on her phone.

Up front, Token and Kyle are having some kind of debate about something to do with their world politics class. Stan couldn’t join in even if he wanted to. He doesn’t understand half of what they’re saying.

“It’s like sometimes I think Mr. Marshall needs reminding: dude, you weren’t actually present at Potsdam and Yalta. You can’t talk about these guys like they’re your bros you go drinking with,” Kyle says at one point, which makes Token laugh so hard that Stan’s worried he might crash the car.

They make it to the club and get their hands stamped on the door. Kenny and Laura are already there with Clyde, each of them with a flask of whiskey concealed about their person. 

There’s no sign of Wendy or Bebe yet, so Red kind of latches onto Laura and Stan’s happy to let her go. He hangs near some tables with Kenny and Cartman for a while, drinking Diet Cokes spiked with JD. 

The place is dark and kind of nasty. The floor is sticky and there’s a smell of beer and smoke in the air, even though neither of those things is supposed to be allowed tonight. The music is pretty terrible too, like it’s been picked by somebody’s dad, trying to be down with the kids.

It’s boring and lame, so Stan keeps on drinking his spiked drinks, until eventually it gets better.

Ke$ha starts to play and Laura comes and drags Kenny onto the dance floor, where they start grinding against each other like they’re in some sleazy music video. The other girls are on the dance floor too, but they edge back, giving them their space. 

“Weak,” Cartman says, turning away. Stan is about to do the same when somebody grabs his arm.

“Hey,” Kyle says, grinning. “Token’s getting drinks. You want to dance too?”

“You don’t dance,” Stan says.

“Token’s teaching me. I’m getting better.”

“Who even are you?” Stan says, but he can’t help grinning.

“Stan!” Bebe shouts when she sees Kyle trying to tug him onto the floor, and then Wendy starts up too. 

“Get over here, come on!”

Red catches his eye and gives him a smirk that says “hey, if you can’t beat them…”

So, Stan lets himself be pulled into the huddle of smiling, jostling people, and they dance together in a group. 

Kenny and Laura reappear once the song changes. Kenny slings an arm around Stan’s neck and laughs right in his ear, while Laura grabs Kyle’s hips and starts dancing good-naturedly with him, until Token comes back and takes over.

It’s fun, after all. Stan tries to ignore the way that Token is making Kyle laugh, how close they wind up dancing. In a group of all his friends, it’s not really that hard to tune these things out. 

Even Cartman joins in, dancing with Wendy, who secretly has kind of a crush on him these days, even if she would never admit it. 

Two songs later, Stan is a sweaty mess. He nudges Clyde, who is the nearest person to him and makes a gesture to show that he’s going to the bar. Clyde nods and then turns the motion into head-banging to the beat of Justin Timberlake.

Stan pushes his way off the dance floor and heads for the bar. It’s still pretty crowded, but even surrounded by people he senses that he is being followed. He turns to see Kyle, squeezing between a couple of girls and smiling at Stan as if he hasn’t spent half the night dancing with some other guy.

“Hey,” he says, sounding a little out of breath in a way that’s sort of sexy, “You getting a drink? I’ll come. What’s up? I’ve hardly seen you all night.”

“You’ve been kind of busy, dude. In case you didn't notice. You had your hands full.”

Kyle grins at him. “Makes a change, right?”

Together, they push their way to the bar and Stan manages to get close enough to lean his forearm on it, staking out their spot. Kyle stands behind him and Stan turns to look at him over his shoulder.

“This place is such a shit-hole,” Stan says.

“I know, man. What the fuck are we doing here? I can’t believe this is my actual life right now.”

“Sucks.”

“I keep thinking this town can’t get worse…”

“Hey, it’s been way worse than this,” Stan says.

“One day we’ll get out and go to a decent club.”

“One day…everything, dude. Motherfucking everything.”

“At least we’ve still got each other,” Kyle says. “That has to count for something. I mean, to our credit, right?”

“What? Like, surely there’s still hope for our miserable lives?”

“Always hope.”

Kyle smiles as he says this. One of the cheesy disco lights swoops across his face, a splash of bright turquoise. Their friends are just across the room, but suddenly it feels like they are the the only two people here — the only two that matter. Stan leans closer to him, just the tips of his fingers still touching the surface of the bar.

“So, you and Token,” he says.

“Me and Token, what?” Kyle says, like it’s a challenge.

“Is that, like, going well, or whatever?”

“I guess. It’s not official or anything. I mean, he’s not my boyfriend. But he’s cool. I like him.”

“You seem happy, dude.”

“I miss you, though,” Kyle says, raising his voice over the music. “I miss it being just you and me.”

“Man, shut up.”

“Seriously. We have to hang out still.”

“Chill. We already do.”

Someone in the crowd knocks into Kyle from behind, making him stumble forwards. He grabs Stan for support, stamping on his foot as he does so.

“Shit.”

“Ow, fuck. Watch it,” Stan says, and then “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay.”

Stan realises that he has his arm around Kyle’s waist, so he moves it quickly. But Kyle doesn’t seem to mind. He just laughs like it’s some big joke and says, “Hey, stranger. Do you come here often?”

“Not if I can help it,” Stan says, glancing towards the bar where the crowds have now closed to cover the space he’d been holding before he got distracted by the instinct to put his hands all over his best friend. “We’re never going to get served.”

“What are we literally doing here?” Kyle says. “We don’t need the mixers. The key ingredient is back there in Kenny’s fucking pocket.”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t even know.” Stan turns and looks behind them at the dance floor, where their friends are hidden somewhere in the mass of strangers.

They have started to push their way back through the crowd, Stan leading the way, when the opening bars of ‘Mr Brightside' by The Killers start up and the whole club suddenly erupts around them. 

Everyone starts jumping, singing along, Stan and Kyle among them. They bought this album between them, trading it back and forth in ninth grade. Every single track has the two of them written all over it. They know every word and now they have their arms around each other, shouting the lyrics into one another’s faces. 

Stan gets a rush of feeling. He is filled with love, with joy, with motherfucking courage. He can smell Kyle's sweat, feel the wiry muscle of Kyle's arm pressing against him.

“But it’s just the price I pay, destiny is calling me,” Stan sings at the top of his lungs, right before the song hits the bridge. 

They are already there, pressed close and looking at each other as the music swells. It makes perfect sense for Stan to use the arm around Kyle’s neck to tug him that bit closer and kiss him on the lips. 

It’s a mistake. Of course it is. But once they start kissing, Stan can’t seem to stop it. Their lips touch and he is instantly lost. Kyle’s kissing him back and fits against him so perfectly. It’s kind of overwhelming, but the music carries him along in a rush. 

He isn’t sure which one of them instigates it, but somehow they are pulling away from the crowd and then they are together in a dark corner of the bar, making out in earnest. Kyle’s hands are everywhere and his teeth are catching against Stan’s bottom lip. His thigh is between Stan’s thighs, and he’s moaning like he’s about die or to come in his pants.

Stan has his hand pressed against the wall, arm braced. The painted plaster is damp beneath his palm, like the walls are sweating. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so hard, so desperate to get off. His other hand is on Kyle’s ass, and he’s kissing him deeply, putting everything he has into it. Kyle just melts against him and Stan loves that. He loves Kyle. 

He’s wondering where the fuck they can go to take this further, when the last bars of the song play out and then suddenly everything stops. The lights come on above them. Of course, the last track of the night is the only one that’s any good.

“Oh shit,” Kyle says, squinting in the glaring light.

Stan doesn’t want to let go, but people can see them now and it’s only a matter of time before one of their friends comes to find them. And sure enough, no sooner has he moved his hand off Kyle’s ass than he hears a familiar voice. 

“Hey, fags,” Cartman says as he approaches.

“Is it too late to make a run for it?” Kyle whispers.

“Yes,” Stan says. He turns around, preparing himself for the inevitable reaming. This is exactly the kind of cold-water shock he needs. But Cartman just pauses and looks back and forth between them, his eyes narrowing.

“What do you want, fat-ass?” Kyle says. Stan puts out a hand in front of him, as a signal to be cool. Cartman opens his mouth, then seems to reconsider and closes it again.

“Are we leaving?” Stan asks.

“Yeah. The Fresh Prince is looking for you guys,” Cartman says. “Kyle especially. Are you coming? Or shall I say I never saw you?”

“We’re coming,” Stan says, stepping forwards, without waiting to see what Kyle’s answer would have been. 

He’s aware of a look passing between Cartman and Kyle as they head for the doors, but he deliberately ignores it. His heart is hammering in his chest now and he feels sort of dizzy, like he's been running and can’t catch his breath. Later in life, he’ll know to call this a panic attack. But for now, it’s just fucking weird.

Outside, Token is waiting for them by the car. He grins when he sees Kyle and then claps Stan on the shoulder.

“Red caught a lift with Bebe,” he says. “What happened, bro? I thought you were in with her.”

“Don’t want to rush anything,” Stan says, feeling honestly like he might puke.

“That’s for sure,” Kyle says, opening the door to the passenger side of the Land Rover and climbing inside. He slams the door without looking at Stan.

Cartman laughs loudly from the back seat, where he is already buckling himself in. Stan stands there for a moment, swallowing hard, trying to make sure he’s not actually going to vomit.

“You okay, dude?” Token asks.

“Yeah. Drank too much. I’m good, though. I’m not gonna puke.”

“You want to wait?”

“No. Honestly.”

“Okay. Shout me if you need me to pull over.”

“Thanks, man,” Stan says, as Token opens the car door for him, like he’s some fucking invalid.

Nobody talks much on the drive home. Token keeps the radio on to fill the silence. Stan rests his forehead against the cold glass of the car window and watches the lights of the town slide past. He still feels dizzy. Focusing on the lights seems to help.

As they are pulling onto his street, Stan risks a glance towards the front of the car, only to catch Kyle looking at him in the rearview mirror. They stare at each other while Token is parking up, then both look away at the same time, as the car lights come on.

Stan trudges up the frozen path to his parents’ house and lets himself quietly inside. The smell of his mom’s meatloaf, leftover from dinner, and the familiar ticking of the clock in the hall calms him down.

He’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom, when the first text from Kyle appears. It reads: ‘This is fucked up.’

Stan can’t deal with it right now. He turns off his phone and climbs into bed, feeling so overwhelmed that it numbs him into sleep.

*

The next morning, Stan gets woken up by the sound of his parents leaving for church. He switches his phone on and finds another text waiting for him.

‘Again with the radio silence? Seriously?’

He stares at message, his thumb hovering over the screen, trying to come up with a response. But there’s nothing to say. His mind keeps blanking out.

Maybe Kyle is doing the same thing, because a new speech bubble with three ellipses keeps appearing and then disappearing beneath the last message, as though Kyle is typing something out and then deleting it without hitting ‘send’.

It is not until about four o’clock that afternoon, when Stan is slumped on the sofa in front of the TV, trying to ignore the sounds of his mother bustling around the kitchen, that another message arrives.

‘I don’t know what’s going on with us, but we need to work it out. Meet me at Stark’s Pond at 7pm. If you don’t show, that’s the last you’ll hear from me about it.’

Stan looks towards the door to his house, imagining pulling on his coat and boots and heading down the path to his mom’s car. He could drive the familiar route to Stark’s Pond… And then what?

Kyle would be there, wrapped in his scarf, stamping his feet to keep warm in the snow. His cheeks would be flushed from the cold and Stan would look at him and wonder what it would feel like to fuck him, but he wouldn’t have a clue what to say to him.

With Kyle, there can be no uncertainties. There’s no room for grey. It has to be black or white; you’re in or you’re out. That’s what he will be expecting from Stan: a definitively clear answer about what’s going on. Anything else will be unacceptable. But that’s not something Stan can give.

7pm comes and goes. Stan sits by his phone, biting his fingernails. He knows that he’s allowing something huge to slip away from him, but that’s the entire point. It’s too huge. Terrifying. Twice, he starts to head for the door, but both times his chest constricts until he feels like he can’t breathe and so he has to sit back down again.

At 8:30pm, the last text from Kyle arrives, the one that will end the ongoing daily thread of hundreds of messages that they have sent each other, back and forth, over the years.

‘Fine. Go fuck yourself. Don’t expect to come near me again.’

‘I'm sorry,’ Stan texts back. 

Kyle doesn't respond to that, and Stan doesn't try to explain himself further.

*

It's not like they never see each other again. They still run in the same group, after all. But they do stop hanging out on their own. People comment at first. The fact that Stan and Kyle hardly seem to talk anymore is oh-so-weird. Then it becomes old news, like everything always does.

And not long after that, Token and Kyle go from not-boyfriends to Facebook official. 

There’s not even a whole year of school left before college, so pretty soon they’re all living in different states anyway. Stan only moves to Boulder, but that’s far enough. 

Token and Kyle both go to the East coast and he knows they stay together, for a while at least, because he sees them together when everyone comes home for Christmas break, at a party that Wendy throws. He and Kyle have an awkward but civil conversation standing next to this bowl of red punch that has slices of grapefruit floating in it. They talk about how shit college dorms are. For a bit it feels almost normal, but then Token turns up and puts his arm around Kyle’s waist and starts talking about the weather in New York and it all just becomes really fucking sad instead.

After that first Christmas, Stan doesn't come home anymore. His time is taken up with hockey anyway, so it’s all too easy to slowly lose touch with his old friends. It’s not some big drama. He simply goes quiet on their Facebook groups, does a big cull of names on his contacts list, and then gets on with his life. He sleeps with a couple of guys in college and that feels about right — better than it ever has for him with girls, anyway.

Stan has no regrets. Not really. Only when he’s drunk. That’s when he will pick up his phone and scroll through his inbox to the lifeless thread still sitting there under Kyle’s name. 

Sometimes, he taps his thumb in the box to compose a new message and wonders if somewhere out there Kyle is looking at his phone too, watching a speech bubble appear and disappear. Three little ellipses communicating everything that Stan couldn’t say.


	5. Chapter 5

Kenny’s bar is sandwiched between a takeout falafel place on one side and a new ‘vape emporium’ on the other. Before the emporium, that building was a barber’s and then a series of ‘pop-up’ shops, each lasting no more than a couple of months. Kyle’s favourite was the one that exclusively sold upmarket hand sanitisers smelling like colognes. For two months the scents of sandalwood, bergamot and lavender seeped into the bar. But then a pop-up microbrewery moved in and suddenly everything went back to smelling like beer again.

It isn't like the bar is some dive, though. Kenny has done a nice job with it and it more than lives up to its hipster location. The place is styled in a faux-redneck fashion, with hick memorabilia on the walls, cutlery in old tin cans and cocktails served in jam jars. The lights are always low and, these days, the place is always packed. Kyle probably spends a bit too much time there, hanging out with Kenny and Cartman, but it’s an easy walk from his apartment and the bar staff all know him by name. Why wouldn't he go?

He never really assumed that he’d be close friends with Kenny or Cartman at this age, but then he never thought he’d be living in Denver either, and didn't for a second think that his adult life would wind up not including Stan Marsh.

That was what really cemented his friendship with those guys in the first place. They had banded around him after everything that happened with Stan. Kenny knew it all, of course, because Kyle told him about it, and Cartman was smart enough to get the jist of it. Both of them took Kyle’s side, Cartman especially. There was about a week where he didn't speak to Stan at all and would do lame shit like hold doors open for Kyle, or offer him the second Twinkie in his packet. These were stupid gestures of solidarity that didn't last long. But Kyle appreciated them all the same, and didn’t forget about them, not even when Cartman went back to treating him like crap again a few days later.

The three of them rubbed along okay without Stan whenever they were home for the holidays during college, but it was when Kenny moved to Denver and Kyle did the same after he graduated that they really became close again, especially after Laura helped Kenny to buy the bar two blocks away from Kyle's new digs. And when Cartman moved to the city a year later, the three of them fell into an easy rhythm of meeting up for drinks or to watch football games. It was nice. At first they might have noticed Stan's absence, but after a while it began to feel like this was how it had always been — just the three of them, getting drunk, bickering about politics and movies and the state of the economy and then hugging and slapping each other on the back until next time.

Usually, Kyle heads to the bar straight from work, in whatever shit he’s wearing. But today, he goes home first, to change his shirt and restyle his hair. He stands in front of his bathroom mirror, running his fingers through his curls obsessively and hating himself for it the whole time. It’s not like he should care what Stan thinks of him.

Kenny says they are meeting at 8pm, so Kyle arrives late on purpose. The plan is to get in, ask his question and then get the fuck out again as quickly as possible.

He spots them immediately when he walks in — his three childhood friends gathered together in the booth in the corner, the one where he and Kenny and Cartman always sit. It feels unreal to see Stan there beside them, but also totally natural, like Kyle is caught in a time warp where everything turned out different. 

What he is not prepared for is just how damn good Stan looks in person. Pro hockey has filled him out, strengthened his already broad shoulders and removed any trace of the little beer gut he used to have from too much partying in senior year. His teeth have been whitened so that they gleam like a movie star’s, and his hair looks better too. It’s shorter now, not the borderline emo cut he’d sported all through high school. This Stan wouldn't look out of place in some glitzy gay nightclub, where anyone who doesn't meet the standards is shunned by the crowds. But the way his face lights up when he looks up from the conversation and sees Kyle is exactly the same.

Noticing just how hot Stan has grown up to be is unsettling - annoying. It puts Kyle on the offensive before he has even reached the table. It’s too late to turn around and walk out now, though. The other guys have spotted him too. The only way is forward.

“Dude! You made it,” Kenny says. He gets up to clasp Kyle’s hand and pull him into a hug. He’s obviously working; he has the black bar apron knotted around his waist.

Kyle pats his back, trying to ignore the way Stan is staring at him.

“Hi,” Stan says, standing up. He doesn't try for a hug, though he looks like he might be thinking about it.

“Hey,” Kyle says. “Don’t get excited. I’m here strictly on business.”

Cartman laughs. He has stayed seated, drinking his beer. But now he looks up at Kyle.

“Woah, what’s up your ass tonight?”

“You want a whiskey sour? Or just a beer? We got some pretty good whiskey,” Kenny says.

“I don’t know,” Kyle says, scowling when Cartman points a fat finger at him.

“Or, wait. Maybe it’s what you wish was up there. Ey, Stan?”

“What?” Stan looks flustered, but by the situation in general. He doesn't seem to have even heard Cartman’s words.

“Come on, man. I’ll throw you out if you’re going to be like that,” Kenny tells Cartman. “We don’t need it in here tonight.”

“I’m a paying customer, asswipe,” Cartman says, “in case you hadn’t noticed.” And to prove his point, he pulls a twenty out of his wallet and tucks it into the pocket of Kenny’s apron. “You can put the Jew’s round on me.”

Kyle catches Cartman’s eye and sees that thing there from back in the day: the weird solidarity. Kenny claps him on the shoulder. “I’ll mix you something special,” he says, heading for the bar.

“Nothing weird. No dry ice,” Kyle calls after him.

For a second, Stan and Kyle just stare at each other. Then, in an uncharacteristic gesture of tact, Cartman clears his throat and stands up with his beer.

“Well, if you losers will excuse me, I think I have a phone call I need to make,” he says, before swaggering off.

“He has a long-distance girlfriend who lives in Arizona now. Can you believe it?” Kyle says. “She’s, like, real. I’ve met her to check. She’s pretty hot, too. I bet he told you already, huh?”

“Only about a million times since I got here,” Stan says, as he sits back down.

Kyle takes the seat opposite, shrugging off his coat. He tries not to log the way that Stan’s gaze follows the movement. It’s a bit too familiar, but more from his most recent encounter with Christian than the Stan that Kyle remembers.

“How are you?” Stan says

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“You look good.”

Kyle doesn't know how to respond to that. He’s hardly going to return the compliment, no matter how true it is. He looks down at his hands and flicks a stray beer nut off the table. His face feels warm and he’s worried that he’s blushing, so he retreats into being catty.

“What brings you chez Kenny anyway? Thought you’d turned your back on all this?”

“Felt an urge to reconnect, I guess.”

Stan touches his beer bottle, twisting it in circles on top of a square cardboard beer mat. He smiles then, but it’s not like his smile when Kyle first walked in. This one seems kind of fake. “I missed you guys,” he says.

“Not that much if it’s taken you five years to get in touch.”

Stan exhales, his cheeks puffing out as he does so. He rubs his hand over his hair in another familiar gesture that now seems sexier than it used to.

“Yeah. It’s been a long time,” he says and Kyle can read the old restraint there, Stan’s way of allowing Kyle’s anger to just roll off of him rather than reacting to it in the way that someone like Cartman would. He’s forever trying to avoid conflict. It is passive, Kyle realises. And it’s irritating.

“What’s your business, then?” Stan asks.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you do? You said you were here on business.”

“I’m a journalist.”

It makes Kyle sad that Stan doesn't know even this most basic piece of information about him. From the look on Stan’s face, it makes him sad too.

“I thought you studied law?”

“I did.”

“Oh. Well, that’s cool. I mean, I can see you being a journalist. You'd be good at it.”

“I am."

"Right. And Cartman's a broker?" Stan shakes his head. "Fuck that, man."

"I know, he thinks he's the wolf of Wall Street."

"A wolf in a fat suit, maybe."

"No change there, then."

"Nope. Guess nothing really changes."

"Some stuff," Kyle says. "Some stuff does change."

Goddamned Fleetwood Mac is playing over the sound system, which they surely have Kenny to thank for. The first chords of ‘I Don’t Want to Know’. Kyle wishes that someone would hurry up and bring him a fucking drink.

Stan looks down at his beer bottle again. As he twists it back and forth, Kyle gets a glimpse of a tattoo on his wrist. It’s something dark, mostly covered by Stan’s sleeve and his watch strap. He guesses that there’s some pretty basic stuff that he doesn’t know about Stan now too.

“Kenny says you live around here,” Stan says, looking up.

“Yeah. I’ve got an apartment a couple of blocks away.”

“That’s cool.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m surprised you came back to Colorado. Figured you’d never look back once you got out.”

“Me too. Honestly? I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Mountain air gets under your skin.”

“It’s in our blood.”

“Right.”

Stan lifts his beer bottle to his lips. There’s a vibe in the air that Kyle’s not totally comfortable with. Like things are getting too intimate too fast. He turns to look towards the bar, thinking maybe he’ll go up there and get himself a beer, but he sees Kenny approaching, balancing a tray like a pro.

“Okay,” Kenny says, setting the drinks down on the table. “I got a whiskey sour for you Kyle. It's a generous double because you totally need to catch up. And another beer for the lady.” Kenny winks as he puts the beer in front of Stan. “I’m just kidding.”

“Thanks,” Stan says, pushing his now empty bottle away and reaching for the fresh one.

“Hey, sit down with us,” Kyle says, as Kenny picks up his tray again.

“No can do, slick. We got kind of a melting ice crisis over at the bar. Duty calls, yo. You guys catch up, though. Don’t worry. I’ll send over some chasers.”

“We don’t need chasers,” Kyle says.

“It’s Mezcal, baby. Really smokey. You’ll like it.” Kenny grins at him, walking backwards towards the bar. There’s no crisis there. Kyle’s not buying his bullshit for a second.

He turns back to Stan and sips experimentally at his cocktail. Kenny might be a pain in the ass, but he can mix a damn fine drink.

“It’s really awesome that you guys still see each other,” Stan says.

“Why wouldn't we? Best friends normally make the effort to keep in touch,” Kyle says, which is an asshole comment, but whatever.

Stan sighs. He’s still playing with the bottle — a sure sign that he’s uncomfortable — but to his credit, he manages to look Kyle dead in the eye.

“Listen,” he says, “I’m sorry that I…”

“You don’t have to,” Kyle cuts him off immediately. He hadn't been expecting Stan to call his bluff and is definitely not ready to have this conversation. But Stan continues.

“I’m just sorry, you know? About everything. I was the one who fucked this. I get it.”

“Okay. Just. Fine. Forget it,” Kyle says.

Silence falls between them. Fleetwood Mac has morphed into Johnny Cash. Kyle recognises the trumpets. His fingers are getting cold from gripping his icy glass too tight and he makes an effort to relax. Stan is apparently doing the same. He rolls his shoulders and settles in his seat a bit more comfortably, resting one arm along the back of the booth, as if making his posture cool and confident will translate into him feeling that way. It’s an old trick, one that might fool someone else, but that Kyle sees through easily.

“So, what else is going on with you?” Stan says.

“Like what?”

“Like...are you still with Token?”

“No way,” Kyle says. “That ended in college. It was a fucking lifetime ago.”

“I thought you guys were set?” Stan says, which is hilarious.

“‘Set’? Are you kidding me?”

“I mean, you seemed good. What happened?”

“I fucked someone else.”

“Wow.”

“Dude, he was like my high school boyfriend. What do you expect?”

“Cheating, though. Not cool, right?”

It’s totally none of Stan’s business, so he has no place looking as shocked as he does. Kyle stands up abruptly and slips out of the booth.

“I’m getting another drink.”

Stan lunges sideways and catches him by the wrist to stop him. “Wait. I’m sorry.”

Kyle glares down at where Stan’s fingers are gripping him. “You don’t have a right to preach to me about a single fucking thing."

“I know. Please. Sit down.”

Stan lets go and gestures back towards the seat in front of him. Instantly, Kyle misses his touch, which is not a great sign right now. He feels shaken by it. There are too many memories here. He sits back down again slowly and looks at Stan. Just Stan. Same as he’s always been.

“I didn't mean to judge. That was lame of me,” Stan says.

“It was.”

“Are you seeing someone else?”

“No. Are you?”

Stan shakes his head and then Kyle just can’t help asking.

“Are the rumours true?”

“Which rumours?”

“That you're practically out now.”

For a second Stan looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights. But it’s only a second. Then he licks his lips and says, “I guess so.”

This is exactly what Kyle doesn’t want to hear. “Fuck,” he says, and then downs the rest of his drink. It’s time to end this shit before it gets out of hand.

“My editor wants me to ask you if you’ll let one of our reporters interview you for a feature,” Kyle says. “Not me. Don't worry. Someone else. I just said I’d ask.”

Stan blinks and then slumps back in his seat, looking at Kyle with a new expression, one that is not at all familiar. “That’s why you’re here.”

“I told you it was business. Hate to burst your bubble.”

“Believe me, there’s no bubble.”

Stan smiles wryly, but as Kyle watches, the expression stretches into a gleaming grin. He thinks Stan’s lost his mind, until he realises that there is someone standing by their table, right at his elbow. This is who Stan is grinning at: a middle-aged couple, both ruddy-cheeked and clutching cell phones. The woman is wearing a Denver hockey scarf.

“You’re Stanley Marsh,” the guy says, beaming at Stan.

“That’s right.” Stan extends his hand and the guy lunges forwards to shake it enthusiastically, clasping Stan’s hand in both of his.

“Oh man, we just love you. It’s so great to meet you.”

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to Denver,” the woman says.

Stan manages to extract his hand from the guy’s grip, so that he can offer it to her as well. “People tell me that. But I think there’s definitely been better things,” he says, still smiling.

“Would you mind if...can we get a selfie with you?”

“Sure.”

Kyle sits there awkwardly, watching the couple crowd around Stan and put their faces a bit too close to his, as they all smile up at the screen of the guy’s phone.

They take at least five pictures, before Stan tells them it was good to meet them, but that he should really be getting back to his friend. He’s pretty graceful about it, like he has to do this shit all the time. His manners are impeccable. He’s warm, polite, but just aloof enough to retain a sense of mystery. It’s impressive to watch. If Kyle were going to write the profile himself, this is the moment he would probably start with. He makes a mental note to recount the episode to Audrey, in case she wants to use it in her piece.

The couple leave, unable to stop themselves from gazing back at Stan as they go, and nearly collide with Kenny, who is making a beeline for the booth.

“Dudes, this is fucking insane, but there's like some paparazzi or some shit outside,” Kenny says. “Cartman's pretending to to be a bouncer right now and keeping them at bay.”

Stan has only just sat back down. Now he looks up and curls his lip in annoyance. “Jesus Christ. Sorry about this,” he says. But Kenny just waves his hand, dismissing the apology.

“It's cool. It's great publicity. And Cartman's in his element. I'm thinking about hiring him.”

“I'll leave. They'll follow me. Get them out of your hair.” Stan pulls his phone from his pocket and starts tapping on it.

“What are you doing?” Kyle asks. Stan glances up at him, like he’s just remembering Kyle’s here.

“Texting my driver.”

“You have a driver?”

“Not a personal one. But the team, like, hires some when we get to a new city or whatever. And this is technically our hometown, so…” Stan puts his phone away and stands up. “Why? Do you need a ride?”

Kyle doesn't even need to think about that one.

“No.”

“You're right. We shouldn't leave together anyway. No need to give them more ammo.” Stan turns to Kenny with a smile. “Thanks for the drinks, man.”

“Anytime, dude. I mean that,” Kenny says.

They hug each other, step apart, and then both look at Kyle, who has yet to move from his seat.

“It was really good to see you,” Stan says. “Maybe we could hang out sometime?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Kyle stands up, but only to hand Stan his editor’s business card. “Here. Will you do the interview?

Stan stares at the name on the card, then slips it into his pocket.

“I’ll get my publicist to call.”

“Thanks, Stan.”

Kyle’s not sure how to end this whole thing, so he just stands there until Kenny takes pity on him and puts his arm around Stan’s shoulders. “Come on, I’ll help fatboy protect you on your way out,” he says, leading Stan towards the door.

“See you, Kyle,” Stan says, turning to look back over his shoulder. Kyle raises a hand in goodbye and watches them go. He sees camera flashes and can hear Cartman hollering at people to “back the fuck up” in a tone that’s way too dramatic for the occasion.

The last thing that Kyle wants to do is to brave that kind of circus right now, so he sits down, reaches for Stan’s abandoned beer and takes a big swig. It’s the kind of watery crap that Stan always used to drink. Clearly, his taste hasn't improved over the years.

There’s something unsatisfying about the whole situation. Even though Kyle hadn't really thought that their meeting would go much better than that, part of him had come here expecting...what? A sense of closure, maybe. Some explanation for the missing years.

He drums his fingers on the table, thinking hard. On his way to the bar he’d been telling himself that he wanted this encounter to be over as fast as possible, but now it seems that it ended way too quickly. He is none the wiser. What happened between them back in high school still doesn't make any sense. If anything, he’s even more confused now that Stan has all but confirmed the rumours that he’s been with other guys.

 _And he thinks you look good_ , a voice at the back of Kyle’s mind pipes up — a voice that Kyle silences immediately.

“Well, isn't this a headfuck?” Cartman says, as he slides into the booth, taking Stan’s vacated seat. He looks tousled from his short stint as a bodyguard, his hair sticking in different directions, but he still has a nearly full glass of imported beer in his hand. He takes huge gulps of it as Kyle watches.

“I know.”

“He’s pretty much a legitimate queer now.”

“Sounds that way.”

Cartman sets his beer down. He wipes his mouth, then laces his fingers together on the table and looks at Kyle over the top of them.

“And he still totally wants to bone you. You’re aware of this, yes?”

“I don’t think so,” Kyle says.

“Jesus Christ. Don’t be such a boring fucking hippy. The man wants to climb into your ass and live there forever. You went to Yale for Christ’s sake. Quit pretending to be mildly retarded. It doesn't suit you and it gets really fucking old sometimes.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Kyle snaps, but can’t get much further than that because Kenny comes hurrying over, all excited, holding three shot glasses in one hand and a bottle of Mezcal in the other.

“That was okay, right? He seems good,” Kenny says. He raises his eyebrows at Kyle, barely looking as he pours the drinks. “Did you guys catch up?”

“What do you mean ‘catch up’? Why are you saying that all the time?”

“He means, are you lovebirds engaged now?” Cartman says, picking up the shot that Kenny slides his way.

“Obviously not,” Kyle says.

“Bottoms up.” Kenny lifts his glass, looking at the others to do the same. They all down the liquor, Cartman choking a little afterwards.

“Gross, man. That tastes like a fucking ashtray.”

Kyle kind of likes the smokiness of it. He licks his lips and can feel the heat of the alcohol spreading through his chest. The shot barely makes Kenny blink. He’s already reaching for the bottle again.

“Not engaged,” Kenny says, as he’s pouring. “But, you know. Any news?”

Kyle puts his hand over his glass to show he doesn't want more when Kenny gestures to him with the bottle.

“I’m sorry. What the hell did you think was going to happen tonight? That we were going to start banging on top of your bar in front of everyone?”

Cartman starts to laugh at that, then stops and screws his face up in disgust.

“Aw, weak. I don’t need that image.”

“No,” Kenny says. “I thought you might act like grown fucking men and let bygones be bygones. That you might make up and give us all a fucking break already. God damn it.” With that, he tosses back his Mezcal.

“Preach,” Cartman says.

Kyle jabs a finger at the tabletop. “Hey. I didn't start this shit, remember? It’s on him. He all but told me he wasn't gay. Now I’m supposed to forgive and forget just because he’s suddenly worked some shit out? Fuck that.”

“Come on, dude,” Kenny says. “You know sexuality doesn't work in black and white like that. Just because you knew your whole deal super early on in life doesn't mean that it's that simple for everyone.”

“I’m sorry. Why are you on his side all of a sudden?”

“I don't know, man. Maybe he needed some time,” Kenny says wearily. He looks towards the bar, like he's searching for a way out of the conversation.

“It's been five years. He could have called me. He could have called me the other day, instead of you.”

“So you could unleash the full heat of your bitch rage on him? The guy’s not a masochist,” Cartman says. He lifts his beer glass towards his mouth, but pauses and raises one eyebrow at Kyle. “Or do you know otherwise?”

All at once, Kyle’s temper snaps. That’s how it’s always been: a slow build towards hot, white rage. A headache is starting to form behind his eyeballs. He suddenly can’t be here anymore.

“Screw this, you guys. I haven't got the patience tonight. I’ll see you next week or something, okay?”

Kyle stands up, grabbing his coat and scarf from the bench. Kenny and Cartman both look up, but they know better than to try to stop him.

“Sure. Later, dude,” Kenny says, with a shrug.

Outside, the air is still bitterly cold, but there’s been a change in it since the weekend. Kyle would bet that the cold snap will be over in a week and that temperatures will start to climb again. They grew up with such endless winters that any hint of warmer weather doesn't go unnoticed, even now. Stan’s right; that mountain air does get under your skin.

Kyle turns a corner and walks along the deserted streets in the direction of his apartment building. Nobody else is out walking in this cold. They’re all safe at home, or driving places in their heated cars. But things have to get pretty extreme to put Kyle off. When he and Stan were kids, they used to play catch amongst snow drifts and stand for hours shivering on street corners rather than go back to their own houses.

He still remembers one winter, when they were about eleven years old and a snap snowstorm trapped Kyle at the Marsh house before his mom could make it there to pick him up. The roads were too treacherous for driving. People had begun to abandon their cars in the street and walk for shelter. All the usual rules were on hold and there was a sense that they could do anything they wanted to. At the time, it was just about the most exciting thing that had ever happened.

Stan’s dad was stuck at his office and his sister was refusing to leave her room, so for once they had the whole of the lounge to themselves. They sat together on the couch, both wrapped up in the huge throw that usually hung over the back of it, watching the coverage of the storm on the local news channel. Stan’s mom made them spaghetti and meatballs and then cups of cocoa.

There were three power outages that night, which only added to the excitement. In Stan’s bedroom, they pushed the camp bed flush with Stan’s single bed to make one big double and lay on it together. They stayed up late, too hyped to sleep, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets and both clutching torches in case the power went again. They told stories to gross each other out and made each other laugh until they cried.

In the morning, Kyle woke to find Stan looking at him, his face just inches away on the pillows.

“We survived,” Stan said, with suitable drama. “Looks like a brand new world out there.”

Sure enough, outside of Stan’s window was the thickest, deepest snow that they had ever seen. Its surface was pristine — glittering and ready for them to leave their marks on it. Kyle still remembers the excitement of it. And walking home now, he can’t help but smile at the memory.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soz for the delay, guys. I had some life stuff.

On Tuesday afternoon, Kyle is walking across the office towards the coffee machine, covering a yawn with one hand and carrying his empty mug in the other, when the editor pops his head out of the door to the meeting room and snaps his fingers at Kyle, jerking him immediately out of his post-lunch slump.

“Do you have a minute? Something's come up,” he says, beckoning Kyle into the room.

It’s obviously not good news. This room only gets used for external visitors or the kind of meeting that a member of HR needs to be present for.

Half expecting to get fired on the spot, Kyle steps into the room and turns to close the door behind him. As he does so, he catches Audrey’s eye. She is unabashedly staring at him, with a stricken look on her face. Probably she already knows that he’s getting the chop.

The door clicks shut and Kyle faces the editor, who is sitting at the table, his iPad in front of him. He gestures for Kyle to take a seat.

“What’s up?” Kyle pulls out a chair and sets his empty mug down.

“You tell me,” Brian says.

He taps the screen of the iPad to bring it to life and pushes it across the table. The web browser is open to the online version of a notorious local gossip rag. It’s the type of publication that gives journalism a bad name, but has impressive circulation numbers anyway. Sometimes Kyle even picks it up himself in line at the grocery store, if he is sure that no-one’s watching, just to see which D-list celebrities are looking fat today. It’s that kind of guilty pleasure.

Splashed across the front page, beneath the headline ‘Stop hiding, or I walk’ is a photograph of Stan. It’s kind of dark, but surprisingly sharp, considering that it was obviously taken from a distance at Kenny’s bar the night before. Stan is sitting in the booth, leaning sideways. His eyes are wide and pleading as he gazes up at Kyle, who is also in the picture and is staring with disdain down at where Stan’s hand is gripping his arm.

“Holy shit,” Kyle says.

It doesn't take a genius to work out what is being inferred in the story. Together, that headline and the photo paint a pretty clear picture of a couple cracking under the pressure of keeping their feelings secret. But Kyle scans the whole story anyway.

_‘They seemed very close,’ an eyewitness said. ‘At one point they argued and it got pretty heated. It looked like there was something more than bromance there.’_

_Rumours about Stanley’s love life are of course nothing new. But could a tough ultimatum from the man of the moment be the push he needs to finally step out of the closet?_

_Our sources can reveal that the fiery redhead is Kyle Broflovski, a Denver local and a journalist at_ Clash _magazine. If the rumours are true and he is Stanley’s mystery man, then it doesn't look like he is willing to stay quiet about it much longer._

"Jesus Christ. This is so badly written,” Kyle says, looking up at Brian, who raises an eyebrow in response.

“That’s what you want to comment on here?”

“Well, it is. Come on. ‘Fiery redhead’?”

“I don’t care how it’s written,” Brian says. “What I want to know is how much of it is true.”

“None of it. Well, some of it. Sort of used to be. It used to be true.” Kyle can feel himself getting worked up. “I did tell you I was too close to the material.”

“Okay,” Brian says, quite calmly. “I'm afraid you might have to get even closer.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got a message this morning from his PR, saying that he was happy to give us a total exclusive, providing you’re doing the interview and writing the piece.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Kyle says immediately.

“Nobody else, she said. They need someone they can trust. And apparently he only trusts you. Which, as you can imagine, leaves me in a bit of a tricky position.”

“Fuck this,” Kyle says, before he can stop himself, and Brian laughs at that. He actually fucking chuckles.

“Obviously I can’t force you to take on a piece that you’re not comfortable with," he says. "But if you do decide to do it, then I can guarantee that Liza's job will be yours when she leaves in May."

Kyle hesitates at that. He’s been after the features editor job since the day he joined the magazine. And since he found out three weeks ago that Liza has accepted a new post in New York, he has been watching the online jobs boards like a hawk.

That one moment of radio silence is all it takes for Brian to know that he’s won. He grins wide and nods at Kyle. “I’ll forward the PR’s details.”

“If I do it,” Kyle says quickly, “I want a raise, too. And before May. Straight away.”

“Fine.”

“Fuck. This is…”

“You’re a true pro,” Brian interruptss, pre-empting any second-guessing. “Thanks, Kyle,” he adds, meaning ‘meeting over’.

As Kyle opens the door, Audrey jumps to attention and starts tapping away on her keyboard, too quickly for the typing to be real. She has obviously been straining to eavesdrop.

“Oh, and see if you can get him to confirm all those rumours,” Brian calls from the office, which makes Christian and a couple of reporters look over also. “Unless you already can, that is?”

Kyle grits his teeth. He ignores Brian's question, ignores the eyes of his colleagues, just stomps back to his desk and sits down to stare at his blank computer screen.

After a moment, he takes his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through his message threads until he reaches one right at the bottom. If he’s doing this, he is not going to hide behind a PR; he’s going straight to the source.

Into the empty message box, he types: ‘Hey. Good to see you last night. Do you still want to hang out? Sounds like the interview is on, so I’ll bring my dictaphone. It’ll be totally professional. Let me know when/where is good.’

Kyle hits ‘send’ before he realises that, after five years, it’s a pretty safe bet that Stan’s gotten a new number or deleted his contact details by now. He quickly types a second message and sends it, cringing at how lame it sounds.

‘Is this even still your number? It’s Kyle, by the way.’

He needn’t have worried. Almost as soon as he’s sent it, that little speech bubble with the ellipses pops up and then several messages appear from Stan in quick succession.

‘Yes to everything,’ the first one says, which makes Kyle’s heart race way more than necessary.

That message is followed by: ‘Still my number still want to hang.’

And, finally: ‘I’m at the Hilton on 12th. Come over 6pm tonight?’

Kyle responds with one word: ‘Okay.’

And suddenly it is just that simple. Maybe it has been that simple all along.

*

At the time, things certainly don’t seem simple. The way they end is slow and torturous. It doesn’t happen all at once, but gets drawn out over a hundred in-jokes they hold back from making and a thousand times they avoid eye contact.

It’s hard, especially because it’s all out in the open, for everyone to see. People comment, ask Kyle what’s up. He never knows what to say.

Token confronts him about it just before graduation. He’s not an idiot, and he has eyes. He can see what’s going on.

“I’m serious about you,” he tells Kyle. “But I don’t want to fuck up here. I don’t want to be a moron.”

Kyle sighs and glares at Stan, who is right fucking there, like he always is. He’s sitting in the corner of the lunchroom with Wendy and Red and pretending that he doesn’t even know that Kyle is here.

Token leans sideways, filling up Kyle’s vision.

“Um, you should definitely be looking at me right now during this conversation.”

Kyle refocuses.

“I know. I am. And you’re not. Being a moron, I mean. I’m serious about you too.”

To prove his point, he reaches out and takes Token’s hand, holds it on top of the table, ignoring the way that Cartman wolf-whistles at them as he lumbers past with his overloaded lunch tray. Kyle squeezes Token’s fingers.

“He’s too much of a fucking coward. Don’t worry about it. I’m not interested in his bullshit,” Kyle says, though really he is. He’s more than interested. The realisation that he is half in love with Stan, and probably has been for years, has crept up on him way too late.

But you can’t keep putting yourself on the line for someone who doesn’t have the balls to even meet you halfway. That’s what he learned that night as he sat in his car, waiting for Stan and freezing his ass off besides Stark’s Pond. It was a turning point, that night. The first step in him hardening himself to all of this stuff.

It’s the reason why, two years later, he can fool around with one of Token’s college friends and not feel anything at all.

*

Stan stares around the hotel room, which he has bought for the occasion. He’s not actually staying at the Hilton; he’s across town, with the rest of the team. But he wants this to be as close as possible to how it used to be. And that does not include paparazzi or teammates banging down the door.

Of course he's seen the papers and is almost one hundred percent certain that Kyle has only agreed to meet so he can yell at him for getting them both thrown into the gossip mill. But that’s okay. Stan’s prepared to take it. He’s been taking Kyle’s bitching since they were kids.

The sound of the room’s phone ringing makes Stan jump. For a moment he can’t find where the noise is coming from. It’s a one-bed suite with a lounge area and a bedroom that’s out of sight. He has to run to the bedside and snatch up the receiver of the phone there before the ringing stops.

“Good afternoon, Mr Marsh,” the receptionist says, “I have a member of the press here to see you. A Mr Macalski?”

“Broflovski,” Stan says, and can hear Kyle in the background, repeating the same. “Send him up.”

During the minutes that it takes Kyle to ride the elevator and find the room, Stan becomes a hyper wreck. He scurries around the room, straightening cushions that are already straight and tucking in chairs that can’t go in any further. At the very last moment, as the knock on the door comes, Stan seizes _The Catcher in the Rye_ , which he had strategically left out on the coffee table and hurls it into the bedroom, out of sight.

When he reaches the door, he yanks it open a bit too fast, so that Kyle looks startled and steps backwards.

“Hey,” Stan says, realises he’s shouted, and then tones it down. “Hey,” he says again, at normal volume.

Kyle stares at him. “Hi.” He’s wearing black skinny jeans and a dark grey sweater under his open overcoat. The colours brings out the green of his eyes and the red of his hair. A leather messenger bag hangs from his shoulder. He shifts the weight of the bag as Stan just stands there and looks at him.

“Shit. Come in,” Stan says, stepping aside and holding the door. “I hope the hotel room’s not weird. I didn’t want the fans to come back if we met somewhere public. I’m sorry about that, by the way. Sucks that you got caught up in it. It was a nice picture though, at least. You looked good. I mean, half the time when they put out pictures of me, I look like some kind of deformed-”

“Dude,” Kyle says, holding up one hand. “Chill. Okay? Let me even get the door shut.”

“Sorry,” Stan says, watching as Kyle closes the door and then sets his bag down on a chair by the desk. “You want some coffee? I can call down to room service.”

“Sure.”

Stan hurries to the bedroom while Kyle is shrugging off his coat and picks up the phone, glad of the chance to compose himself. As the phone is ringing, he tells himself to be cool. There’s nothing to freak out about; it’s just Kyle.

Coffees ordered, Stan heads back to the lounge to find Kyle crouching by the coffee table and frowning at a dictaphone. He’s toggling buttons back and forth, but looks up when Stan comes in.

“It’s cool that I record, right? Easier than me scribbling the whole time.”

“Yeah. Of course,” Stan says.

“So, the way it will work is we’ll just have a chat,” Kyle explains, standing up. “I’ll ask you some questions. If there’s anything you don’t want to answer, anything that’s off the record, that’s cool, just tell me. We’ll take about twenty minutes. If there’s anything in particular you want me to cover, that’s fine too. Again, just let me know.”

Stan nods, surprised at how hot he finds Kyle’s professionalism, even though he hears this kind of spiel from journalists all the time.

“I mean, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You’re a pro at it anyway. Not your first time at the rodeo, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to take the couch?” Kyle nods towards it and then drags the desk chair over for himself.

Stan sits down, figuring they’ll get the interview out of the way and then get down to the business of setting things right between them.

“Okay,” Kyle says. He has a reporter’s notebook and a pen at the ready, despite the dictaphone. He leans forwards and hits record.

“So, it’s been a good season for you,” he starts. It’s such a stock opener that it’s easy for Stan to slip right into his media training.

“Yeah. We’ve been very fortunate. The cohesion has been there and the plays have been working great. We’ve got the coach to thank for that, of course,” Stan says, smiling out of habit. “It’s good to be on home turf, too. The last game was a dream, honestly. The fans were fantastic. That always makes a difference.”

“And people are saying that your skills are making a difference, too. ‘Best thing to happen to Denver,’ I heard someone say recently. Must be nice to hear stuff like that.”

“Well, sure. It’s flattering. And I do work hard. But it’s a team effort, always. I couldn’t exactly win much on my own.”

“So, you’re at the top of your game...”

“I guess so.”

“Which is why it’s surprising that there have been so many rumours flying around recently about you gearing up for early retirement. Is there any truth to those?”

Stan sucks in a breath. He’d been expecting Kyle to warm up a bit before getting to this question.

“There are lots of rumours. About all kinds of things,” he says, carefully, which makes Kyle’s eyes narrow. “It doesn’t mean that there’s truth to them all.”

“Then, you’re saying that it’s not the case that you have been considering hanging up your skates in the near future?”

“I’m saying that rumours exaggerate things,” Stan says, knowing he’s being evasive.

Kyle licks his lips. Stan can see that he’s formulating his next question, but before he can ask it, there is a knock at the door.

“Room service,” comes a muffled voice from out in the hallway.

Stan stands up and answers the door, accepting the tray of coffee from the teenage bellboy on the other side of it. He can feel Kyle’s eyes on him as he pulls notes from his pocket, carelessly handing over what is surely way too generous a tip, given the way that the kid’s eyes widen. But he’s young and has the hungry look of the wrong side of the tracks in his eyes, and Stan always overcompensate around kids like this.

“Dude, you just tipped like twenty dollars for a cup of coffee,” Kyle says, once the door is closed again.

“Did I? I don’t know.” Stan’s distracted again, pouring the coffee. “You want sugar? Cream? Fuck. I don’t even know how you take your coffee.”

“Cream. No sugar. And thank you,” Kyle says.

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“Oh. Right.”

Stan hands over a cup and then picks up his own. Kyle turns pages in his notebook and looks up at Stan.

“Are you okay to continue?”

“Of course,” Stan says.

“This isn’t rattling you?”

“No.”

“Because you seem kind of rattled, if I’m being honest.”

Kyle’s expression is concerned, but his pen is still poised above his notebook, ready to catch the slightest slip-up.

“I’m not rattled. Okay? It’s just weird. I’m not used to doing this with someone I know. I’ve got my stock answers and it feels fucking fake talking to you like that.”

“So, just talk to me.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not retarded. You’re press. I can’t ‘just talk to you’ while that thing’s rolling.” Stan gestures to the dictaphone on the coffee table between them. Kyle reaches out and hits the pause button, but keeps his finger there, ready to record again.

“I told you someone else would do this,” he says. “But you asked for me. And I’m going to do my job, dude. I’m not pulling my punches because we have history or whatever.”

This whole meeting is a terrible fucking idea; Stan sees that now. But it’s way too late. He’s dragged Kyle all the way out here on the pretence of giving him a story, so of course that’s what he expects. The sooner Stan starts dropping some juicy quotes, the sooner they can wrap this up. He knocks back a gulp of hot coffee like it’s liquor, and says: “Okay. Hit me.”

Kyle stares at him for a moment, before nodding and glancing down at the shorthand squiggles on the page of his notebook. He clicks the recorder back on.

“You mentioned rumours other than the ones about you quitting hockey,” he says.

“Yep.”

“Would you care to comment on those?”

Stan takes another mouthful of coffee, to buy himself a few seconds of thinking time. With another journalist he could bluff his way through this. But Kyle is not intimidated, nor impressed by him. The only option is to throw himself into it.

“What do you want to know about them?” Stan says.

“Is it true that you’re gay?”

“Yes.”

The speed and certainty of the answer is more than Kyle was expecting. Stan sees that in the way that he clears his throat and looks down at his little notebook, blinking quickly.

“Okay,” Kyle says, only thrown for a moment. “That’s not something you’ve spoken about publicly before, if I’m not mistaken. Why have you kept quiet about it?”

Stan lays one arm along the back of the sofa, trying to make himself relax.

“A couple of reasons. First: because homosexuality isn’t discussed as much as it should be in the world of pro sports, which is a problem. And secondly, because it’s taken me a while to come to terms with it myself.”

“When do you feel you did come to terms with it?”

“In college, probably. That’s when I started experimenting. Though it’s only really recently that I’d say I’ve become at peace with it.”

Kyle scoffs at that. “You started ‘experimenting’ in college? Are you kidding me?”

“You’re right. It was earlier than that,” Stan says. “What, you want that on the tape?”

“I want some fucking honesty for a change.” Kyle’s tense now, gripping his notebook tightly.

“I am trying to be honest. What do you want me to say? I tried some things in high school, but I guess I wasn’t ready for it then.”

“Uh-huh…” Kyle pretends to look thoughtful, the last shred of professionalism evaporating. “And would you say that was because you were a giant pussy back then?”

“Jesus, Kyle…”

“You started it, by the way. In case you don't remember that.”

“I was scared, okay? You scared me."

“Oh, boo hoo.”

“Right. That's why we could never talk about it and why we couldn’t be friends for five years. You measure everyone by your standards, but I'm not the same as you,” Stan says.

“And you chose the path of least resistance at my expense. I can't respect that. I hated you for it.”

“Well I'm sorry you don't have any respect for me.”

“I don't.”

“I know! You just said it. Jesus Christ. But is there really nothing here worth working on?”

“I’m only here for my fucking interview,” Kyle says, scowling as Stan shifts to the edge of the sofa and leans forwards, trying to look him properly in the eye.

“Why is it so hard to understand? I wasn't ready for it before. Back then I was freaking out and you were so casual about it. Like, it was just sex, so it didn't even matter…”

“It didn't matter!”

“It did to me!”

Kyle jumps to his feet. “Yeah. And you totally fucking screwed me anyway, dude. So, no. There's nothing worthwhile here. And there's nothing else for us to talk about today.”

Then Stan is on his feet too. Kyle’s already reaching for the door handle, but Stan checks him with his shoulder and slips in front of him, throwing his arms out to block the way. It is a hockey move, second nature now. Kyle steps back, clutching his shoulder in surprise.

“What the fuck? Are you a caveman, now? Let me past.”

“I’m sorry,” Stan says, planting his feet more firmly. “But please don’t leave.”

“Why not?”

“I love you, dude. Not past tense. But I don't know how to make this work. You know? I don't see how to bring it all together. It feels too intense. And really fucking complicated. It did then. And it does now. I really don't want you to go.”

Stan takes a shaky breath and realises for the first time that he’s shouting. Pretty loudly at that. Anyone walking past the room will have enough ammo to feed the tabloids for weeks.

“You know all of this,” he says, lowering his voice. “I don't get why you're making me say it.”

“Because I needed to hear it back then, Stan. How was I supposed to know it wasn't some kind of weird experimental pity fuck?”

Stan risks stepping away from the door and lowering his arms, so that he can move closer to Kyle.

“I think about you all the time,” he says, because now he has started being honest, he can’t seem to stop. “I think about you whenever I jerk off.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Kyle snaps. “Don't you know where to find porn?”

“Come on. Pity fuck? How could it ever be that shallow?”

“I don't know. How could I wake up and not find you next to me after that first time we hooked up?”

“I'm sorry. I told you: I was scared.”

At that, Kyle turns away and covers his eyes with one hand. “Oh my god, we're going in fucking circles.”

“I know.”

In the silence that follows, Stan hears a low hissing noise and realises that the dictaphone is still running on the coffee table, recording every word they say. Kyle notices too. He picks it up and shuts it off, while Stan stays standing uselessly by the door.

“Where do we go now?” Stan says.

Kyle shrugs. He gathers up his notebook and pen and shoves them into the messenger bag. “Home? Call it a day?”

Stan nods thoughtfully, turning the idea over. Then, after a moment, he says, “You want some take-out? I'm hungry.”

He goes to the bedroom and comes back with the cordless handset, dialling as he walks. Kyle has his bag on his shoulder and his coat in one hand, but he hasn’t left yet.

“Who are you calling?”

“City Wok,” Stan says, putting the phone to his ear.

“You still know their number by heart?”

“Don't you?”

“Five, five, five. Three, nine, two, one,” Kyle says.

“There you go.”

“Dude, I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“No, that’s definitely the right number.”

“No, I mean...we’re in Denver. I’m pretty sure they don’t deliver this far.”

“Fuck. You’re right.” Someone has just picked up on the other end of the line, but Stan hangs up quickly. “I forgot we’re not at home.”

“Well,” Kyle says. He’s standing by the door now, shrugging on his coat. He puts his hand on the door handle and Stan doesn’t try to stop him this time. But Kyle doesn’t open the door. He purses his lips and looks back at Stan thoughtfully.

“Well,” he says again. “I know a place for Chinese near here. It’s not as shitty as City Wok. But it’s still pretty fucking shitty. Do you want to go?”

“Sounds amazing,” Stan says, scrambling to grab his own coat. “I’m there.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hilariously, it’s taken me this long to realise that it has been roughly five years since I was last writing fanfiction...only for me to now write a story about getting back together with someone you haven’t spoken to for five years. I mean, come on. That’s some Freudian shit, right?

The restaurant is on a corner a few blocks down from the Hilton, on a street that has yet to learn to the meaning of the word ‘gentrification’. The sign outside is missing two of its letters and there is a strip club right next door. There’s no chance of them getting papped here – it’s far too untrendy for anyone to have their eye on. It also has the worst service in town, but the best Chinese food that Kyle has ever tasted.

“I think you’ll like this place,” he says, as he holds the door for Stan on their way in.

“Smells great,” Stan says, looking around. There are red paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling and Chinese prints on the walls. It is March, but the restaurant inexplicably still has some Christmas decorations up, bits of tinsel here and there and fairy lights strung between the picture frames. There are only a scattering of other patrons; several dudes eating alone, probably waiting for the strip club to open.

A waitress approaches them as they linger by the counter.

“Two?” she snaps, as if annoyed to see customers. She snatches laminated menus from a pile and starts to lead them towards a table without waiting for an answer. “Come this way.”

She seats them in a corner, at a round table covered with a faded yellow tablecloth. Bottles of soy sauce and a bowl of crackers are already out on the table. Something tells Kyle that the crackers might have been there a while.

“Thanks,” he tells the waitress, stripping off his coat. She just grunts at him and then says, “You want something to drink?”

“I’ll take a beer.”

“Me too,” Stan says.

“Tsingtao okay?”

They nod and pull out chairs as the waitress stomps off to shout at another table. Stan takes the seat facing away from the room, probably to be less visible to any Denver fans who happen to be passing.

“Friendly here, aren’t they?” he says.

Kyle drapes his coat over the back of the other chair and sits down opposite him.

“I like that,” he says. “No bullshit. Makes a nice change from servers who try too hard. I’m sick of everyone trying too hard.”

Stan smiles at that. “I know. What’s wrong with this country? So many fucking go-getters.”

Kyle finds himself smiling too, which is kind of miraculous given that they were yelling at each other in a hotel room just twenty minutes ago. Stan looks down at the menu, which doesn’t give much away. It’s just a long list of dishes written in Mandarin, with a basic English translation next to each one. There are no pictures and no descriptions.

“What’s good here?” he asks, reaching absently for the probably stale crackers.

“I really like the ho fun,” Kyle says.

“The what?”

“It’s like, these flat noodles. Really good with beef. And the xiao long bao are amazing. That’s um, these dumplings that have a kind of soup inside them?”

“Cool. Do they have orange chicken?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s get that too.” Stan sets his menu down just as the waitress appears with their beers. He lets Kyle order for the both of them.

Once the order is placed, they sit in silence, sipping their drinks. Kyle can hear the waitress shouting their order through the hatch to the kitchen, but it’s mostly drowned out by the music playing from a speaker above their head – Mandarin covers of American pop songs. Right now, Kyle thinks it might be ‘Cherish’ by Madonna.

“I’m sorry I yelled back there,” Stan says. “I really do want to fix this.”

“I know.” Kyle looks down. “I guess I do too.”

“I have been thinking about quitting, you know.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Off the record.”

“Sure.”

“Not that soon. I don’t know where this thing came from that I’m only going to finish the season or whatever.”

“That’s bullshit?”

“Total bullshit. But in, like, a couple of years or something, maybe. I want to do something useful with my life. I have this dumb dream of setting up my own charity.”

“Really? What kind?”

“Human rights.” Stan smiles wryly and pops a cracker into his mouth. “Stupid, right?”

“Huh. That's funny. I specialised in human rights law when I was training. That's what I wanted to get into.”

“How come you didn't?”

Kyle shakes his head. “No jobs. It's really competitive. And I didn’t want to do corporate or property law, which is basically all that’s on offer around here if you don’t want to be a solicitor, which I don’t. And so I just fell into this instead. Turned out to be kind of good at it. The pay’s terrible, but it’s interesting.”

“Well,” Stan says, “if I ever need advice in human rights law, I know who to ask, right?”

“Yeah, come to me.”

“I mean, this can be on the record. All of it. You can write whatever you like.”

“Let’s forget about the piece,” Kyle says, suddenly sick of this whole fucking drama. “Let’s honestly just catch up.”

Stan raises his eyebrows. “I thought you were only here for your story?”

“Don’t be a douche, man. This is an olive branch, here. You want it or not?”

“Okay. You’re right.” Stan holds up his hands in apology.

“So, where do we start?” Kyle asks. “Five years is a long fucking time.”

“Well, fill me in,” Stan says. “What happened with you and Token? Tell me about that.”

Kyle clicks his tongue against his teeth and stares out across the restaurant. A family – mom, dad and two kids – have just walked through the door, but are turning round and heading right back out again after just one look at the place.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s pretty shameful. It’s probably the worst thing I’ve done.”

“You tell me about that and I will tell you about the time that Mom came to visit me at college to celebrate her birthday and walked in on me in bed with some guy, because she was two hours early.”

Kyle nearly chokes on his beer. “Holy shit. Happy birthday, Sharon.”

“Yeah. That’s how I came out to her. But you go first, dude.”

So, Kyle starts talking while Stan listens. The food arrives, and Stan won’t stop announcing how delicious it all is. They order two more rounds of beers and sit there for three hours, swapping stories about everything that’s happened since high school, and then reminiscing about everything that came before.

“Do you remember that dude, what was his name? The French exchange student, who went out with Bebe in like, tenth grade or something?”

“Hugo,” Stan says, his mouth full of the last of the ho fun.

“Yes! Hugo. He came onto me outside the science labs when we were waiting for detention to start one time,” Kyle admits. “I didn’t know what was happening. I told him to fuck off. But then I couldn’t look Bebe in the face for like a week. She was so into him and I didn’t know how to tell her.”

Stan chews and swallows. “I knew that.”

“How? I never told anyone. Was it Cartman? It’s always fucking Cartman.”

“No, I didn’t know about the science lab. But I knew that Hugo liked you. I always noticed when people liked you.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. They were my competition. I mean, I don’t think I really understood that at the time. But, I noticed anyway.”

“Huh,” Kyle says, mulling that over.

“Hugo,” Stan says. “Such fucking stupid hair.”

“The worst hair,” Kyle agrees.

When the check arrives, Stan tries to pick it up, but Kyle demands they split it instead. They pay up and then head outside. Kyle decides he’s had too much beer to drive and that he’s going to have to leave his car on this shitty street and come pick it up in the morning.

“I can’t believe you let me have a third beer,” he says, as he is rummaging in his bag for his phone to order an Uber. “You know I can’t hold beer.”

“I can’t believe that place doesn’t give you fortune cookies,” Stan says. “What kind of Chinese restaurant doesn’t have fortune cookies?”

“It’s too authentic for that.”

“I love fortune cookies.”

“Shit,” Kyle says. “I think I left my dictaphone at the hotel.”

And that’s how he winds up back in the hallway of the Denver Hilton, standing outside the door to room 406 for the second time that night.

"Here you go," Stan says, handing the dictaphone back to him through the door.

"Tonight was fun," Kyle says, like it's the end of a date. It kind of feels like a date. He pockets the dictaphone. "Let's, you know. Do it again some time."

He smiles at Stan and hugs him goodbye, but there's this thing in the air, a vibe that can't be left unaddressed. When Stan steps back, Kyle catches him by the hand, and turns his wrist over. He pushes up the sleeve to get a look at that tattoo, something he’s been wanting to do all night.

“Let me see this,” he says, and Stan obediently tugs his sleeve higher and holds his arm at a better angle for Kyle to see.

It’s a star with a heavy outline, like the kind that represents the U.S. army. A thick white, ribbon winds over it, with the words ‘I got soul, but I’m not a soldier’ emblazoned across. Lyrics by The Killers. Kyle runs his thumb across them.

“It’s embarrassing,” Stan says, but Kyle doesn’t think so. He thinks it just about sums Stan up. The tattoo only confirms that he is still the same person he has always been.

Rather than tell Stan that, Kyle takes him by the shoulders and pulls him towards him. Their lips meet and their kiss is like an extension of the whole night – all of this is inevitable.

Stan's lips are soft. Kissing him feels familiar, like this is something that they have done a million times before, instead of just twice, when they were wasted and messy and everything was confused. It's the scent of him, Kyle realises. Stan still smells like home.

“Excuse me, is it the nineties again?” he asks, pulling back.

Stan blinks at him. “What?”

“You’re still wearing CK One?”

“I like it,” Stan says, because of course he does.

“That’s so retro. Slash lame.”

Stan slides his arms around Kyle’s waist. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a massive hipster douchebag?”

“Yeah. All the time.”

“I’ve always wanted to fuck a hipster. See how much cooler it is.”

“Way fucking cooler. I’ll tell you that for free.”

Kyle puts his hand on Stan’s chest and guides him back into the room. The door swings shut behind them and Kyle lets Stan press him back against it. He opens his mouth to the kiss, using his tongue to up the stakes, making everything deeper and more intense.

Stan moans, and that is familiar too. He says Kyle's name, breathing hard, and it is then, right then, that Kyle knows that they are definitely going to fuck tonight, that it is going to be awesome, and that it will fix everything. He wants that, all of that, more than anything, and so he gives himself over to it completely, grabbing Stan by the back of the neck and pulling him in close, sliding his thigh between Stan's, curving his spine back and letting his mouth drop open in invitation. ‘Take me,’ he makes his body say, ‘I'm yours already.’

Stan gets the message. All of a sudden, he's not hesitant anymore. He surges forward, with all his hockey strength. His tongue and teeth clash inelegantly with Kyle's. Then everything is moving hyper fast. It's urgent, like there is a time limit on this. Stan’s hands are on Kyle's waist and then his ass, lifting him up like it's nothing and not just the single hottest thing in the world. The door rattles under their combined and shifting weight.

The corner of the framed fire escape diagram is digging into the small of Kyle's back, but he puts his legs around Stan and goes with it because nothing matters right now except keeping their lips locked and making sure that Stan can feel how hard he is already.

“It was supposed to be us before,” Stan pants against Kyle’s ear, when they part for breath. “You know it was.”

“Oh my God, let me down,” Kyle says, struggling free of Stan’s grip. “We need to go to bed before I ruin these pants.”

They find their way to the big, Hilton-branded bed, stripping off socks and shoes as they go. Stan trips over some book that is on the floor and Kyle has to catch him by the arm to keep him on his feet.

“Why do you own _The Catcher in the Rye_?” he asks, looking down at it.

“Doesn’t matter,” Stan says. He grabs the hem of his shirt and tugs it over his head and then Kyle has to pause halfway through taking off his sweater because this is one thing that is not familiar.

“Damn, dude,” he says, eyeing the actual six-pack that Stan’s beer gut has turned into. Stan looks down at himself and shrugs.

“I mean, it’s my job.”

Kyle pulls off his sweater. “Don’t be in such a rush to quit hockey.”

“I told you that was a rumour.”

“Oh, right.”

Stan runs his hands up Kyle’s arms. “This is a rumour too.”

“Not anymore,” Kyle says, reaching to unbuckle Stan’s belt and shove his jeans down around his ankles.

After a pause for Kyle to shimmy out of his own pants – they are far too tight for anyone else to take off him – they finally fall into bed, wrestling with the duvet until skin is touching skin.

When Stan wraps his fingers around Kyle’s dick, the friction of his calloused fingers is beautiful, but Kyle wants more than that. He wants what they both should have had all along. He leans across Stan, first to one side of the bed and then the next, opening the drawers of the nightstand. One is completely empty, while the other holds nothing but a leatherbound Bible. Kyle holds up the Bible in alarm.

“Where’s the stuff?”

“I honestly wasn’t expecting this to happen,” Stan says, in apology.

“But you’re such a boyscout,” Kyle says. “Aren’t you always prepared?”

“You’re the bigger boyscout! You must have a stash in your fancy manbag.”

Kyle normally does carry condoms in that fucking bag, but he’s not about to admit that, and anyway, he knows that he used the last of them with Christian a few nights ago.

“No.”

“Fuck,” Stan says, punching his pillow in frustration. “I can run to the store?”

He looks so sad and so hopeful, that Kyle makes an executive decision. He cups Stan’s face in his hands and kisses him slowly. When he pulls back he says, “I would never do this with anyone else. But I’m safe. And I trust you.”

“I trust you too.”

“Okay, then.” Kyle picks up Stan’s hand and sucks two of Stan’s fingers into his mouth, rolling his tongue around them to make sure they’re good and wet. Stan’s lips part as he watches. The fingers of his other hand knead the flesh of Kyle’s thigh impatiently.

Kyle’s actually nowhere near as much of a slut as Kenny makes him out to be, but he certainly knows what he’s doing. It’s not his first time caught without lube and he knows how to breathe, how to relax the right muscles to let first one and then another of Stan’s damp fingers slide into him without any angst.

“You’re so easy,” Stan breathes.

Kyle nudges their noses together. “Well, I had to keep myself busy all that time you weren’t around,” he says, knowing the effect those words will have.

Sure enough, with a muttered curse, Stan seizes Kyle’s hips and jerks him closer, lining up to push in. And then he’s inside and both of them are gasping and clutching at one another.

They fuck hard and don’t last long. They can’t seem to break eye contact the whole time, which Kyle doesn’t think he’s experienced before. It’s pretty fucking intense. He can see every shift in Stan’s eyes, the way his pupils dilate and his eyelashes flicker as he’s getting close. Kyle reaches around to grab Stan’s ass with one hand, urging him on. At the same time, Stan curls his fingers around Kyle’s dick, flicking his thumb over the tip. It is only then that Kyle finally closes his eyes, dropping his head back as he comes.

Stan follows right after him, riding out the last of his orgasm with a few final thrusts, before collapsing on top of Kyle, his beautiful chest wet with sweat.

“That was way overdue,” he mutters, once he has caught his breath.

“Tell me about it. By about five years,” Kyle says. Stan pushes himself up with shaky arms, only to slump back down on the other side of the bed. Kyle rolls over to face him.

“Can we hit reset?” Stan asks. “Just, like, from now?”

"Yeah," Kyle says. He reaches under the covers to grip Stan’s hand. “Let’s start again.”

*

The next day, Kyle sits at his desk and struggles to write. There are only a handful of useable quotes on the recorded interview before it all disintegrates into shouting, but that’s not the real problem; it’s the fact that he can’t seem to write about Stan objectively.

“What do you want me to write?” he’d asked that morning, saying goodbye to Stan at the door to the hotel room.

“Everything. I don’t care,” Stan said. He was holding a strip of bacon in one hand, the leftovers of their room service breakfast. “Do you have to go? Can’t you just stay?”

He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing nothing but sweatpants, and it took all of Kyle’s resolve to pick up his bag and walk away from him.

“I have a deadline,” Kyle said, uncapping a pen with his teeth and taking Stan’s bacon-free hand to scribble his address right onto the skin. “But this is my apartment. Come over tonight?”

Stan had agreed, and then kissed him, and then hasn’t stopped texting since.

‘What was the name of that record store down the street from Tweak’s coffee back home?’ is the next message that appears, while Kyle is booting up his desktop.

‘Spin doctor’ he types, one-handed, as he is opening and closing desk drawers, searching for his headphones.

‘Oh right,’ Stan texts back. And then: ‘We should go back there.’ Followed quickly by: ‘Did it close down?’

Kyle should be annoyed by the strings of inane messages, but he can’t be, because this is the way that Stan has always been, and he is just so fucking glad to have it back again.

‘Dude, stoked as I am to have rekindled the legendary super-bestship plus benefits…’ he sends.

‘So epic,’ Stan replies instantly.

‘I really have to work’

‘Ok I’ll catch you later. Good luck with the piece. Text me if you need a quote. Or just make them up. I’ll back whatever.’

‘See you tonight.’ Kyle hits send and then shuts his phone in a drawer out of sight.

He sits at his desk until lunch and then all through his break, trying to make the piece work. But everything he writes sounds ridiculous and too formal.

Kyle drums his fingers on his desk, thinking about Stan. He stares at the words in his open document. Then, before he can reconsider, he deletes everything he has already written and starts again from scratch.

_There is a lot more to Stanley Marsh than being able to score a winning goal in the closing seconds of an ice hockey match. I should know; I have been in love with him since we were kids, growing up together in small-town Colorado. And I’m still in love with him now._

_That gets the first set of rumours about him out of the way. As for the rest, Marsh has something to say about those._

_“Rumours exaggerate things,” he explains. “There are lots of rumours about all kinds of things. It doesn’t mean that there’s truth to them all.”_

_He is referring to suggestions that he is planning to quit hockey at the end of his current season, which, he assures me, are certainly not true. Denver fans will be pleased to hear that, because Marsh is truly at the top of his game..._

It’s not going to win the Pulitzer, but it is the most honest thing that Kyle has ever written. And when he prints it out and hands it over to Brian for his notes, he seems to agree. The editor lets out a low whistle, reading the first paragraph.

“You’re gonna get pickup on this. You’re aware of that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he aware?

“He doesn’t care,” Kyle says, and knows that it’s the truth. The press will go wild for a bit, but he and Stan will face that together.

“Good. Because I wouldn’t pull this even if he did,” Brian says, looking up at him. “Nice work.”

Kyle nods and turns to go back to his desk.

Later that evening, he will head home to his apartment and find Stan waiting there for him, having let himself in with the spare key. He’ll look up when Kyle comes through the door and his face will light up, just like old times.

In a matter of months, Stan will have moved in for good. Perhaps that’s going too fast, but they will never see it that way. To their minds, they are simply making up for those years when they moved way too slow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this, please take a moment to leave a comment and tell me so. I really do appreciate them. <3


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